Hellbound
by L.M.Lewis
Summary: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a lot can kill you.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: These characters are not mine and I make no profit from them.

Rated: T

**Author's Note**: Liz produced a list of existing H&McC fics garnered from a multitude of sources. Upon it appeared the title 'Hellbound' and it was attributed to me. I figured this was a suggestion from a higher authority that the story needed to be written.

Cliff Notes, Jacuzzi, and Tupperware are all registered trademarks which will be encountered in the course of this tale.

Many thanks to Cheri and Owl.

'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.'

**Hellbound**

By L. M. Lewis

**Prologue**

The officer on the scene took one look at things and called his sergeant, who took a longer look and notified Lieutenant Harper. Frank, hearing the victim's name and the circumstances of the death, halted what would have been a fairly perfunctory processing of a suicide and advised the assigned officers to keep a more open mind.

Then he called Milt.

**Chapter 1**

Mark drove and Hardcastle seemed to be pondering. The younger man hadn't heard him say more than twenty words since the call had come in. Harry Bainbridge's file had already been on the judge's desk. McCormick had seen him perusing it, on and off for a week now: phone calls, inquiries, that sort of thing. There'd been nothing that required the services of a Tonto up till this point, so Mark had just been catching up on the yard work.

Now Bainbridge was dead, an apparent suicide. Frank had mentioned a note. Mark cast one long sideward look at the man sitting silently beside him in the car. Frank must've said a few other things, as well, but Hardcastle hadn't seen fit to share any of it. After almost a year in the man's employ, McCormick occasionally felt a twinge of irritation at the casual way in which he was left uniformed, but, in truth, if Bainbridge was dead, then the thing was over.

He pulled into the drive at the address he'd been given and parked the Coyote a little ways back from the official vehicles. Mark climbed halfway out and propped himself there, surveying the home and grounds. It was something in a league with Gull's Way—Tudor, not flashy, but very nice.

"Crime pays," Mark said dryly.

"Ya think so?" Hardcastle shot back.

McCormick wasn't much in a mood to argue. He shrugged and added, "Either that, or somebody was giving this guy a lot of credit."

Hardcastle just shook his head, then climbed out and stood next to the car. Frank must've spotted them from inside. He strolled out, hands in his pockets, looking his usual rumpled and laconic self.

"Cyanide," he said tersely.

Hardcastle let an eyebrow rise.

"Well, that's what we found on the scene—a jar of the stuff, labeled. Ought to be a cinch to trace where he got it. Don't know for a fact if that's what killed him, but there's no other obvious cause of death."

The judge gave that a considering nod.

"And then there's the note—" Frank broke off, then turned and jerked his chin back toward the house, indicating for them to follow. Mark fell in behind the other two.

The front hallway was hardwood-floored, and the place echoed with the sounds of the technicians at work—hollow, tomblike, with a sense of emptiness. They stepped aside for the passing of the police photographer, then Frank led them through into what might have been a study, or a very plush office. Some of the furniture was sheet-draped.

"He was in the process of selling. Maybe some financial trouble?" Frank supposed.

"Not that I'd found out so far, not that that's the sort of thing a guy in his position would want getting out." Hardcastle was staring at the one uncovered piece in the room, a handsome cherry-wood desk.

Half-sprawled across the top was Bainbridge himself, dead enough to not have required any attention from the paramedics. Now that he had a source to attach it to, Mark was vaguely aware of the odor, nothing strong, just _there_. He swallowed once.

"When?" he asked, almost involuntarily.

"Probably the day before yesterday." Frank shrugged. "He'd made an appointment with a real estate agent last week. They were supposed to meet this morning. The guy shows; he knocks and gives a holler. He sees the door's open a little. Maybe he's kinda eager; so he steps in and looks around, then sees the body. Bet he'll be talking about this one for a while."

Hardcastle was nodding this over. Then he stepped closer to the desk. "The note?" he asked.

"Ah . . ." Frank pointed to the small side table, to the right of the desk.

It had also apparently been uncovered. A white sheet lay crumpled on the floor nearby. The table supported a typewriter—an old and sturdy manual one.

"The note was still on the roller. We bagged it. Hey, Stevens," Harper grabbed a passing technician. "You got the note?"

The man nodded, stepped out into the hallway again, then returned a moment later and passed over a Lucite bag containing a single sheet. Frank handed it to Hardcastle.

The judge studied the words, his expression deepening to a frown. McCormick leaned in unobtrusively.

The first few lines were farewells to people that Mark hadn't heard of. He wasn't the one who had been poring over the file, though. From there the tone changed, and the bitter hopelessness was more apparent. '_And tell Hardcase he can finally close the book on me. He probably wouldn't have gotten me any other way, but he hounded me into the ground. At least one person will get some satisfaction out of this_.'

Mark stepped back, took a deep breath, on the verge of saying something, though he hadn't decided quite what yet.

"Like I said," Frank sounded almost apologetic, "still in the machine. No signature."

"Yeah," Hardcastle grunted. "Handy, huh?" He passed the bag back, after giving it one more quick, almost dismissive glance. "It's his style, though," he finally added grudgingly.

"We're doing it right," Frank assured him. "If it wasn't what it appears to be, we'll sort it out."

Hardcastle waved that away, too. "A guy like Harry, never sure which side he was really on, the idea that he was _wrong_, and that other people would find out—that would've set real hard with him. Wouldn't surprise me he'd take this way out, if he thought we were going to finally nail him."

Frank looked around him and then nodded once. "Yeah, I suppose." Then there was a pause before he added, "And _were_ you going to nail him?"

"Who knows?" Hardcastle exhaled something close to a sigh. "It probably wouldn't have been for much. He wasn't as dirty as the guys he dealt with, that's for sure. Then he goes and does a damn fool thing like this."

"Or somebody does it for him," Frank said, "one of the guys who was dirtier."

"And writes him a note that names me? What, you think they wanted to wave this under my nose? That'd be stupid, Frank—like daring me." The judge shook his head. "Nah, you've kicked the machine into gear. Somebody'll run down that cyanide. It'll turn out that Harry bought it, and his prints are going to be all over that typewriter."

"Yeah," Harper said glumly, "probably."

00000

On the way home it was Mark's turn to be pensive, and he figured it must've been obvious because even before they hit the PCH, Hardcastle half-turned in his seat and said, "Okay, out with it."

"Out with what?" McCormick replied. He most certainly wasn't going to say what he'd been thinking.

"You figure maybe I really did push this guy kinda hard, and maybe what he did wasn't all that surprising, if it was a choice between that and prison."

Mark blanched. This was way beyond deduction, into the realm of mind-reading. _Dammit._ He took a deep breath. It wasn't as if he'd actually signed a confession yet.

"Well," he said consideringly, "how much time was Bainbridge looking at?"

Hardcastle shrugged. "A couple of years, tops. Witness tampering, maybe a charge of obstruction. You didn't look at his file, huh?"

Mark shook his head, glad for the segue into the specifics.

"What'd he do?" He left off the 'allegedly'; this wasn't polite company and he'd never known Hardcastle to wander into the gray zone. "I mean, he must've felt pretty guilty about something."

The judge snorted. "Only about the chance that he might get caught." He shook his head. "Guys like him, I dunno . . . there he was, trained in the law, and damn good at it, too."

Mark frowned; he hadn't heard that part. The judge's determined pursuit now seemed more explicable. He cast a quick glance aside.

"Yeah," Hardcastle admitted, "and even the bad guys need lawyers. I'm not denying _that_. It's an adversarial system. But those lawyers have to operate within the law, within the ethics of the profession. You get what I'm saying?"

Mark nodded once. There was something in the judge's tone that made it sound like a fundamental truth.

"Bainbridge," Hardcastle sighed, "he did a couple of things that were pretty close to the line, stuff that resulted in cases having to be dismissed. I didn't have any choice."

McCormick heard the slight emphasis on the '_I_'. It was obviously personal.

"But then there was a case—this was about two years ago—a mob guy named Sylvester Romney was being held on suspicion of murder."

"You told me about that one. He had one of his lieutenants killed, thought he was fooling around with his girlfriend."

"That's the one." Hardcastle nodded his grim approval. "And here I thought you never paid attention," he added dryly.

Mark shrugged. "That one was interesting. Kinda like 'The Godfather' meets 'Days of Our Lives'."

"Yeah, well, it made it all the way to seating a jury. Then the woman—she was the main witness—clammed up. It was pretty obvious that someone had gotten to her, and since she was being kept in a safe house, and the only one who had access was her lawyer—"

"Harry."

"Exactly." Hardcastle said. "Well, the case unraveled, the charges were dropped, and the woman went back to being Sylvester's main squeeze. Harry started getting a little more action from the crooked-nose trade. Got the fancy house, like you saw."

McCormick risked it. "So, sometimes crime _does_ pay."

"Not if I have anything to say about it," the judge said grimly. "Here's Bainbridge, spitting on the code of ethics, and Romney, he got away with murder. But stuff like that doesn't take place in a vacuum; the girlfriend knows what had happened, so must a bunch of other people. Sometimes all you have to do is stir the pot."

"And you were stirring." Mark squelched his smile. "Okay, what about Bainbridge's money troubles?"

"There were rumors that Harry was getting kind of nervous; that he might break if we could bring enough pressure to bear." Hardcastle shrugged. "I guess I was the one applying the pressure. Romney started moving back; couldn't risk any ties with him. And once you've stepped over the line a few times like that, you get a reputation. Other people don't necessarily want to hire a guy who might be seen as a mob lawyer."

"It was his own doing. Sounds like he painted himself into a corner," McCormick said decisively, as though there'd never been a moment's doubt in his mind. "And, hell, he wasn't even any good at being a bad guy."

The judge looked sideways at him, as if he thought maybe the moral of the story had been lost in the translation.

"Not that it would have been _good_ to be better at being a bad guy," Mark added with a half-apologetic grin.

Hardcastle shook his head. "I dunno, kiddo, you may know the words, but you can't always carry the tune."

00000

The Bainbridge file stayed out for a few days, as though Hardcastle wanted one last look at it, to settle his mind on things. In all other regards he seemed unperturbed by the turn of events, and whatever his role in it might have been.

As for Mark, he thought, on the whole, he preferred being Tonto.

That appeared to be the end of it, especially after Frank relayed the preliminary findings. At least half of Hardcastle's suppositions had been borne out—the typewriter was only marked by Bainbridge's prints. As for the potassium cyanide, it had been traced as far as a chemical supply house in Mexico, and Bainbridge had made several vacation trips there. The medical examiner was satisfied, and ready to rule it a suicide.

"Handy, I'd say," Mark leaned over the pot of chili and did a little stirring of his own. "I mean, him having the foresight to pick up a bottle of the stuff, what?—a couple of months ago at least."

"Might have been on his mind for a while."

Mark nodded and stirred. "Yeah, might have even been before you started poking. Who knows?"

Hardcastle's look was sharp. "Would it matter if it hadn't?" he asked flatly.

"Nope, absolutely not." Mark shook his head. "Not supposed to hang out in the kitchen if you can't stand heat, right?" One last stir and then he snapped off the control on the stove and carried the pot to the table. There he finally caught the judge's mildly aggravated expression. "What?" he said. "Not enough pinto beans?"

Hardcastle's annoyance faded into something like disappointment. "You still think this is about him not being a good enough bad guy, huh?"

"I didn't say that," Mark insisted with a tone of righteousness.

"It's not what you say. I'll grant you're a pretty quick study in that department." The judge pointed out quietly. "It's what you _think_."

Mark froze, ladle over the pot. Then he put it back down again, and studied the older man for a moment.

"Look," he finally said, "you're preaching to the choir more often than you realize, but, I dunno, I can't help it, maybe I think being loyal to _something_ is better than no loyalty at all. You stick it out; you stay the course."

"Even if the guy you're supposed to be loyal to is a racketeer and a murderer?"

Mark frowned over that one and finally said, "Okay, when you put it that way." He sighed and added, "Never been much honor among thieves, anyway, at least not that I ever saw."

The judge gave that a nod and a grin of ready approval as he pushed his bowl over. "Now you're cookin'."

"Yeah, " McCormick sighed. "Most of the time. Nearly _always_," he muttered, and went back to the dishing up.

00000

Mark was drying the last bowl when the phone rang. He had the receiver in his hand and heard Frank give the judge a terse hello before, with equal brevity, the lieutenant said there'd been another death.

"Shelia Storm. Out the window of her penthouse in Marina del Rey."

"Jumped, or pushed?" he heard Hardcastle say with an ineffable weariness that he hadn't noticed in the conversation before dinner.

"Jumped, probably There's a note."

McCormick had hung up soundlessly on the judge's sigh. By the time he was in the den, having strolled in no particular hurry, Hardcastle was already off the phone himself, staring down at a piece of paper that bore a quickly scribbled address.

Mark said nothing, just raised an eyebrow in question.

"Frank," the older man said, with no hint of weariness, all grim business again. "It's Romney's girlfriend, dead."

"We're going?"

"Yeah, Frank said there's something we oughta see."

Mark frowned. "Is it typed?" he finally asked, point blank.

The judge's gaze was piercing.

"Yeah, well," the younger man shrugged, "the phone rings in the kitchen, too. You okay?"

"Sure," Hardcastle hmmphed. "Why shouldn't I be? This one, though, they better take a good, _long_ look at it. Way too convenient for Romney, if you ask me."

00000

Another upper-class crime scene—Mark supposed it was technically a crime, even if was a suicide. _Self-murder_. He remembered reading the term somewhere along the way, very old-fashioned, very quaint.

There was nothing at all quaint about what had happened to the late Ms. Storm, though. McCormick had harbored some faint hopes that the body might already have been removed by the coroner's crew. No such luck. The photo session was still underway and their path took them past the sedan, its roof crumpled in by the force of what had fallen on it. The body was sprawled limply, a few feet away, at the point of second impact.

He looked up at the column of balconies—more flashes from up there, the one at the top. He swallowed, kept his eyes in the middle ground, and followed Frank and Hardcastle.

A brief wait for the elevator. There were other people in the lobby—obviously residents—looking put out, nervous, or merely curious. _Gawking_.

_Well, but what are you here for?_

_For him._ He watched the judge step onto the elevator. He and Frank hadn't exchanged more than a few words since they'd arrived. It was all not that much different than the visit to Bainbridge's house, but now McCormick could see the slight hunch to the older man's shoulders, the forcibly blank expression his face had held as they'd passed Shelia's body.

The hallway on the penthouse floor was crowded. They eased past a couple of plainclothes guys and a uniformed officer, and through the open door of the apartment. Inside were two more detectives, one Mark recognized as a guy named Parks from the Mob Task Force. To McCormick, the third man in that group had the unmistakable look of a perpetrator, rather than a cop.

_Hired muscle_. Though in this case, the muscle had a layer of fat over it. The guy must've topped 280, though it was balanced on a good-sized frame and he could probably pack a punch. His face was above-standard for mean, with enough scars to make the point that he wouldn't back down from a fight.

Mark saw Hardcastle smile for the first time since before dinner. Granted, it wasn't a pleasant smile, but there was some animation to his voice when he said, "Well, if it isn't Piggy Harleson." Now that McCormick heard the nickname, he caught the resemblance immediately. "How ya doing? You working for Sly these days?"

Harleson, who'd looked like he wasn't planning on saying anything to anybody, gritted his teeth. Mark tried for Hardcastle's elbow, ready to inflict a little détente on the situation if necessary.

But before he could intervene, he heard the bigger man mutter, in a surprising show of self-control, "The hell you'd know about it, Hardcase."

Parks was looking at a notebook. He cast an impatient glance at Harleson and then turned his head toward the judge. "He found the body." A quick jerk of his chin to the hulk. "Says he was 'visiting' tonight, went out to run some errands." He pointed to a coffee table, where a bag with a donut shop logo on the side sat unopened. "Gone, what, twenty minutes?" Parks asked.

Harleson nodded glumly.

Parks went on, briskly. "He came back, found her out there on his way in. Called the cops."

The little group stood there for a moment, in mutual near-astonishment for even that much cooperation with authority from an unexpected quarter.

"He called from a payphone at the corner. It was," the detective checked his notes again, "the second call, logged less than a minute after one of the neighbors phoned it in. She'd heard a thump and looked out the window, second floor, and says she called immediately."

Hardcastle glanced back over his shoulder at the hallway and the elevator. Then back at Harleson for a long second look.

"I guess that takes you off the hook for this one," he said. "Couldn't have gotten from that balcony to the corner phone in much under five minutes."

"I was coming up the street. I saw her fall," Harleson said. "There was nothin' I could do."

Though he hadn't been expecting it, Mark heard something underlying that low rumble that held a note of deep remorse.

"Visiting, huh?" Hardcastle said speculatively. "You visit often?"

Mark swore if he got the guy out of there with his jaw in one piece, they were going to have the talk about 'not baiting goons' one more time. But Harleson's anger seemed to be ebbing. He merely shrugged at the question and muttered, "Some."

"He's here every day," Parks added. "According to the neighbors."

"Sly know about that?" Hardcastle asked Harleson dryly.

"I thought you figured I worked for him."

"You were her bodyguard? Or maybe just her guard." The judge let that one hang.

Harleson said nothing. He finally turned to Parks. "You saw the note. And even Hardcase says I couldn't have been up here and down by that phone at the same time. You bustin' me for something or can I go?"

The detective cast one last look down at his notebook. "Notify us if you aren't going to be available at the address you gave. We may have some more questions."

Harleson gave this one sharp nod. Then he moved past Hardcastle, with surprising agility, and was out the door.

The judge just stared after him. He finally turned back to Parks and said, "Nothing? Not even a weapons violation?"

"All he was packing was donuts," the detective said with a shrug. "Word is that Sly assigned him full-time to keep an eye on her. Word is that maybe he liked his job too much."

"_Him_?" the judge said.

Parks shrugged again. "Beauty and the beast, opposites attract, who the hell knows?"

"Well," Hardcastle said with a grimace, "if Romney knew, it would've been a short trip down for Harleson, too. Maybe he just stepped out at the right time."

"There's a note," Frank reminded gently. He pointed through the doorway, into the bedroom.

The judge cast a brief look around before he stepped through. It was all very luxurious, no sign of any office work being done here. "Typed?" he asked flatly.

"Handwritten," Harper replied. "We'll get the pros to look it over, but on first pass it looks a lot like the writing on her grocery list."

Mark looked down at the Lucite envelope that had been left on the makeup table. The writing was upright, unhurried, and careful, like something done by someone who didn't write very often.

No farewells this time. The addressee seemed to be understood. Her fear was palpable, though. '_They're sniffing around some more. I don't think this is ever going to end. Maybe there's only one way for it to be over._'

Hardcastle hadn't bothered to pick it up. Mark watched his shoulders slump almost imperceptibly and then straighten again.

"But we've been sitting on our duffs since Bainbridge," Mark blurted.

"She didn't name any names," Frank pointed out.

"You got anybody else who was looking into all of this?" Hardcastle said with a sigh. "You said the coroner ruled Bainbridge a suicide, right? No one came around and questioned her, did they?"

Frank shook his head.

"Then all this," he gestured vaguely from the note, to the balcony doors, still standing open with a stiff breeze stirring the curtains, "was just her coming to a boil from before that. Sometimes it takes a while. Either that or somebody held a gun to her head and made her write a suicide note, then pitched her out the window, all in under twenty minutes."

"Harleson says she seemed in okay spirits when he left," Parks offered.

"Doesn't matter." The judge waved that away. "Might have been an impulse. Might've been she finally just worked up the courage." He turned from the table and the note and started walking slowly toward the door.

"I'll let you know if we find anything else," Frank called out after him.

Mark had been standing there, frozen in thought. Now he hustled, finally catching up in the hallway by the elevator. Hardcastle seemed lost in his own thoughts, as well.

"Awfully convenient," McCormick said quietly, "for Romney, I mean. If Shelia was starting to fall for the goon, then the two of them might have wanted to turn him in, just to protect themselves. He _could_ have had her killed."

"The note. It'll be her handwriting, I'll bet," the judge added with dull finality.

"Well . . . maybe, "Mark conceded. "But then it was her own doing. Her corner, her paint," he added staunchly. "And you'd even stopped stirring the pot." He frowned. "Did you do that because—?"

"Nah," Hardcastle said hastily. "Just ran out of leads, with Bainbridge gone. Everybody always clams up after something like that. No one wants to speak ill—you know." Another shrug. "It needed to sit a while."

"Right," Mark said as they stepped off the elevator.

They crossed the now less-crowded lobby and stepped out into the night. He saw the hunched figure of Piggy Harleson standing a ways off, still obviously absorbed with the scene by the car, which was now in the removal phase. As the doors of the coroner's wagon banged shut, McCormick watched him start, very slightly, then turn and move off, his gait heavy and his shoulders still slumped.

McCormick turned; the judge was standing, still staring at the damaged car, the point of impact.

"She was a looker. Nice figure, too. A show girl, back in Vegas. That's what it was with the name." Hardcastle wrinkled his forehead slightly. "The Shelia part was hers, though. Shelia Macintyre? Yeah, that was it. From Dubuque, or maybe it was Cedar Rapids. Somewhere in Iowa."

Mark let the musing wind down. It was as much eulogy as the woman was likely to get.

"Come on," he finally said to the older man, "let's go home."

00000

He wandered up to the main house the next morning and let himself in the front door. It was past eight o'clock but there were no signs of activity. The reason for that might have been the file open on the judge's desk. It was a thick one, and belonged to Sylvester Romney. Even a casual perusal might have taken well into the wee hours.

Mark closed it, scooped it up, and carried it off to the kitchen. If the pot was going to get stirred again, he wanted to know what might boil over.

He was sitting there, with a cup of coffee and a bowl of cornflakes, studying a photo of the late Ms. Storm, aka Macintyre, when heard the judge come down the stairs. He closed the file and pushed it aside, though he made no effort to hide it.

Hardcastle's 'good morning' consisted mostly of a grunt. He watched the older man negotiate with the coffeemaker, and sit down at the table, still squinting slightly. McCormick smiled at him benignly, with the moral authority of the earlier riser.

"You looked at that yet?" Hardcastle spared one finger to point at the file.

"A little," McCormick admitted.

"Figures," the judge grunted again. "The ones with the nice pictures in 'em, those are your speed."

"Not much point to that, now," Mark said soberly. "She's not available."

"Yeah." Hardcastle took another sip of his coffee but looked not much inclined to make any further moves toward breakfast.

"So," Mark finally interrupted the silence, "we going mobster hunting?"

Hardcastle lifted his gaze off the coffee cup. "I dunno yet, might be."

"I thought you said she was a suicide. You change your mind?"

"That?" The judge appeared to shake off whatever he'd been dwelling on. "Irrelevant. Romney was dirty before, even if he had nothing to do with this. Giving up now is like . . ."

The thought had drifted off, unspoken. Mark didn't try to fill it in because it might involve something along the lines of 'admitting I caused those deaths, that I was _wrong_,' and he by no means believed Hardcastle was, this time around.

"Okay," he finally said, "just gimme a day or two to get up to speed, will ya?"

Hardcastle's eyebrows rose slightly. "You're not gonna tell me this guy is too scary, puts his pants on two legs at a time blindfolded, all that?"

"Nah," Mark sat back, pondering it. "This one can't even keep his girlfriend from falling into bed with every other guy she meets. How scary can he be? Hell, I bet she even made time with Bainbridge."

The judge cocked his head. "You think?"

"Yeah, probably got kinda lonely in that safe house."

Hardcastle frowned in momentary thought and then said. "Might've been why she took the jump, Bainbridge dying and all."

Mark heard the faint element of hope in that, the one that belied all the judge's protests that none of this disturbed him in the slightest. He let it be.

The older man seemed to realize where the silence was coming from. He pulled himself up out of the chair and cast a parting, "Just read the file, will ya? You'll see what we're dealing with here. The guy's all business when it comes to getting what he wants." Then he was through the doorway and gone.

00000

It did take him the better part of the next three days to get through it, though it wasn't so much the thickness that made it heavy going. The lack of admissible evidence against Sylvester Romney tended to be related to the sudden and bloody deaths of witnesses and, aside from Shelia's photograph, the rest of the illustrative material gave an entirely different meaning to the term 'head shot'.

As for Shelia's first inamorato, an up-and-coming mob kid named Nick Bonhavey, his remains had never been fully recovered. But, according to the file, one small but significant portion had been sent through the U.S. Mail, addressed to Ms. Storm herself. Mark was beginning to understand why Hardcastle had been so peeved by his casual defense of loyalty. Anyone who would do Romney's bidding had made a deal with the devil.

It was after he'd finally gotten through that story that McCormick had put the whole file back on the judge's desk, gone outside, and mowed the lawn. That's where he was, an hour later, when he saw Frank's non-descript sedan pull up the drive.

He stopped the motor and wiped his hands on his pants. It was probably news from the autopsy, and now he found himself taking a more personal interest in it. He waved at Harper, getting not much more than a nod and a grim look in return.

"He's inside?"

"Yeah," Mark frowned as he met him at the bottom of the front steps. "What now, Frank?"

"Another body," Harper said glumly. "I'd give you three guesses but you'd probably get it in one."

"Piggy Harleson?" Mark paused at Frank's brief nod. "_How_?"

"Well," Frank sighed, "not suicide unless he figured out some way of using a roll of duct tape on himself and then winding up under four feet of garbage at the top of a landfill in San Bernardino."

Mark grimaced.

"The report is that he wasn't dead when he went in—not even unconscious, looks like."

"Romney." It was Hardcastle, standing in the front doorway and speaking with finality.

From what he now knew, Mark would have had to second the motion. Frank didn't seem inclined to disagree, either, but he also didn't look like a man who was anticipating an open-and-shut case.

"The evidence may be a little sketchy, Milt. The county guys called in some state manpower, but it's a big dump and he's probably been in it since the night Shelia died."

Hardcastle had stepped outside. Now he joined them at the bottom of the stairs. He took a deep breath. "How the hell did they find him at all?"

"We knew he was missing. We'd sent someone around to ask him some follow-up questions the next morning. Just routine. He wasn't home and Parks thought he was probably in the wind, at least. Even if the rumors about him and Shelia weren't true, he musta figured he'd be in trouble with his boss for letting the woman do a header."

"But the dump?"

"Yeah, well, that was a mystery call to the San Bernardino authorities—got the jurisdiction right and everything—made from a public phone."

Hardcastle frowned and Mark asked, "Who's left to rat on the guy?"

Frank shrugged. "Might even be Romney himself. Might've figured there isn't any evidence and once the body was found, we'd stop looking and he could get on with doing his business."

"If he figured that, he made a big mistake," the judge muttered.

Harper looked worried. "Let 'em do the investigation, Milt. You haven't got anything solid on Romney on this one. You go poking around and—"

"I'm not gonna go 'poking'," Hardcastle said indignantly.

Frank looked at him with some doubt, then cast a quick side glance at Mark, who shrugged and said, "Well, don't look at me; I'm not the one with the silver bullets and the 'Hi-yo, Silver.' I'm just in charge of the lawnmower."

"You know how to drop a dime, don't you?" the lieutenant asked with some asperity.

Mark shot a nervous look at Hardcastle and then made an almost imperceptible nod.

The judge harrumphed. "You were giving _me_ the lecture on loyalty. Hah." Then he turned back to Frank. "And don't go trying to corrupt him, okay?"

Harper shook his head reluctantly. "All I'm asking is that you let the thing play out a bit. We might get lucky. We might find some evidence linking him to this death, maybe to all three. It's possible."

Hardcastle nodded in a way that didn't look too convincing, as he saw Frank off to his car. Mark watched the sedan pull away slowly, and the judge return.

Perhaps his step was a little lighter. Maybe there was a glimmer of fire back in his eye that the younger man hadn't even realized had been gone the past week. Either way he had a suspicion that they were done with mere stirring and ready to start with the poking. Mark pinched the bridge of his nose and half-hid a smile that was completely unwarranted by the circumstances.

"You're gonna get me in trouble with Frank, aren't you?"

"Nah, nothing like that." There was a hint of a smile on the judge's face, too. "I'm just gonna pay a visit to Mr. Romney."

McCormick looked at him questioningly. "What makes you think he'll even see you?"

Hardcastle shrugged. "He's one of those macho hoods, ya know, angry all the time, the kind of guy that doesn't think too straight, like Terry Harlow. You remember how he was?"

"How could I forget?" Mark said dryly. He'd stolen a car from the man and then, on Hardcastle's instruction, called him up and insulted him about it. "I hope you don't want me to get Romney on the horn and rag him about his employee retention problems."

"Nah," Hardcastle gave him a pat on the arm, "I figure I'll do it this time, and I'll bet you twenty he'll agree to a meet, if only to spit in my eye."

Mark waved the bet off. He'd seen Hardcastle bait hoods before.


	2. Chapter 2

**Hellbound/ **L.M.Lewis

**Chapter 2**

Mark drove and Hardcastle smiled. It wasn't exactly a happy smile, more one of tense anticipation, and it was accompanied by an occasional, almost-tuneless whistle.

McCormick was glad the man's spirits seemed to be improved, but he wished it wasn't on account of them having a four o'clock appointment with a murderer. The judge had been absolutely right about the mobster—the man had jumped at a chance to meet his adversary. It was Romney who set the time and the place—it appeared he had some business to take care of first—and his estate, not all that far north of Gulls Way, was Mark's current designation.

It wasn't that McCormick was all that worried, even though Frank was probably back in his office, blissfully unaware that a whole lot of poking was going on. Mark figured even a pissed-off mobster hadn't gotten this far in life by taking-out ex-judges in his own home. Romney wouldn't know that Hardcastle stubbornly insisted on working without a net.

He wasn't sure exactly what the judge planned on saying. He thought maybe it was better that way, easier to look unconcerned, which is always a big plus when walking into a lion's den. He grimaced slightly, though, as he pulled off the main road and onto the twisting, private drive. It was more isolated than he'd expected.

Isolated _and_ deserted. None of the usual goon greeting committees favored by the higher-class criminal element—no one emerged from the Spanish colonial mansion to do the customary pat-down-and-glower. Mark frowned and glanced at the judge, whose own smile had gone a little puzzled. Hardcastle finally shrugged as he shifted up and out.

There were two cars in the drive besides the Coyote. One was a very sharp Porsche that Mark recognized from the file photos as Romney's. _Crime pays. _He didn't say it out loud. He tore himself away from a quick inspection and picked up his pace to close the gap between himself and the judge, already standing on the front steps, already leaning hard on the bell.

A second try after a brief and impatient interval. Still no answer. Mark wasn't sure which of them noticed it first, but it was Hardcastle who edged the not-quite-closed door further open with his elbow. He gave a sharp yank to the judge's other arm and raised his eyebrows in silent question.

"We've got an _appointment_," Hardcastle hissed, "and the door is open."

"Well, it is _now_," Mark whispered back, but that was as far as he got.

He felt the judge stiffen and he followed the man's gaze. He saw it now, too, not far down the hallway from the door—someone sprawled, half in and half out of another door. Only the feet and legs were visible, and they weren't moving.

"'Rendering aid and assistance in an apparent emergency'," Hardcastle muttered as he started to move forward. McCormick caught the tone and figured he was being quoted precedent.

The judge uttered a perfunctory "Anybody home?" as he strode in. The legs still didn't move and now it could be clearly seen that they were attached to a dead body.

It was a middle-aged corpse—not in the goon weight class, and clearly not Romney himself. Hardcastle frowned down at it. "Elmer Walthall," he said consideringly. "He's an accountant, a money guy for the mob." The judge's frown deepened. "His type usually die of old age; they stay pretty much on the legit side of the business."

It was obvious that the man on the floor hadn't succumbed to natural causes. Even lying face-up, the damage to the back of his skull was apparent. Mark hope that was only blood on the terrazzo flooring. It was a thick smear extending a few feet past the head.

"Someone whacked him from behind," Hardcastle speculated, "then they grabbed his legs and dragged him that way," he pointed back into the foyer, "so he'd be visible from the door."

"Romney?" Mark swallowed hard. Some of what was on the floor was definitely not just blood.

"Nah." Hardcastle looked at him sharply. "Go outside if you're gonna throw up."

Mark shook his head hastily.

"And don't touch anything."

"The phone?"

"Just a sec."

Hardcastle had already stepped back into the foyer but was turning in the wrong direction. Mark, frozen briefly, broke his stare from the thing on the floor and followed quickly, keeping his fingerprints in his pockets.

Their footfalls echoed in the otherwise silent house. The judge didn't bother to call out anymore, merely glancing into each room as they passed by—no one, and nothing else was obviously out of place. They'd reached the back, and the patio doors opening onto a terraced yard with a pool.

Hardcastle hadn't stopped frowning. Now he was staring intently in the direction of the pool. Mark looked, too. It obviously hadn't been in recent use, but neither was it completely drained. The water level was at least a foot below the gutter and murky with sediment.

The patio door was unlatched and slightly ajar. Hardcastle put his foot into the crack and eased it open further. He stepped through and then walked a few feet closer to the edge, staring down fixedly. Mark, right behind him, heard him let out a sound—startled, almost a gasp. McCormick edged up next to him and saw what had stopped the other man in mid-step.

Romney looked as though he was kneeling on the bottom of the pool, though obviously to remain in that position there had to be chains or rope involved. His face was turned upwards, eyes open, mouth as well, in a final shout of horror that must have occurred as the water slowly closed in over him.

Two inches. It was just two inches too deep.

00000

McCormick, remembering the judge's admonitions by the corpse in the front room, carefully walked ten feet off the patio before he leaned over and retched. Not that there was anything particularly graphic about this last bit. He supposed it was just cumulative.

When he finally turned around, he saw the judge kneeling alongside the edge of the pool, peering in as though he was trying to get a better grasp on the mechanics of the situation. Mark straightened up slowly and reluctantly made his way back.

"You okay?" Hardcastle asked without looking away from what he was studying.

"Yeah." Mark kept his eyes slightly averted.

"Looks like a bicycle chain fastened to the drain grate in the bottom. Kinda hard to see with all this dirt in the water. Must've been at least a little emptier. They put him in there, filled it up—"

"He was still alive?"

"Yeah," the judge shrugged. "Don't suppose there would have been much point to it if he hadn't been."

"_Why_? I mean, what _was _the point to it?"

"I dunno. To get him to talk, or maybe to keep him from talking. Maybe just to send a message. Not sure. This isn't your typical mob killing. They usually use water that's a lot deeper."

Mark stood there, arms crossed, listening to the judge calmly discussing reasons, and reminded himself that the man in the pool had been a particularly vicious murderer.

_Still . . ._

"So they put him in there and started filling the pool?"

"Looks like it."

"And then turned the water off and watched him drown?"

"Yeah. Most likely." Hardcastle looked over at the faucets on the other end. "Probably won't be any prints on those handles, though. He paused, glancing back up over his shoulder. "You sure you're okay?"

Mark nodded once. "Yeah . . . Maybe we should call the cops now?"

00000

The LA County guys arrived first and, about twenty minutes later, Frank pulled up, looking exasperated, but not all that surprised. Mark stayed back, out of the line of fire, but the latest developments provided Harper with a fair amount of distraction.

"You said you talked to him about four hours ago?"

Hardcastle nodded.

The lieutenant checked his watch. "That wasn't even fifteen minutes after I left your place. Dammit, Milt, you're lucky the guys who did this weren't still here when you two drove up."

"Come on, Frank, don't tell me _this_ was what you were worried about." The judge looked around him and took a heavy breath. "It was the last thing I would have expected. Hell, I don't know where this all fits in."

"A serial killer," Mark said quietly. "Maybe."

The other two were staring at him. Hardcastle finally said, "Two dead guys in one place isn't exactly 'serial,' kiddo."

"No," Mark hesitated for a moment, then plunged ahead, "I mean, maybe someone wants all of them dead."

"Nah, nice try, though," the judge shook his head, "but the first two were suicides. We got the notes. Besides, even if you were to explain those away, there's no sense to the rest of it. Most killers have a method or two that they stick to. We got a poisoning, a fall, a suffocation, a bludgeoning, and a drowning. See?—No pattern."

McCormick took in their looks of doubt and backed off from what he'd been going to say next. The notes were a problem, that was certain, especially the handwritten one. Maybe he was just too imaginative.

Then he shook his head sharply. "But if Romney killed Harleson, and maybe even his accountant, then who killed Romney?"

Frank gave that a puzzled shrug. "Lots of possibilities. Maybe Romney hired out Harleson's killing, then the guys who handled the contract weren't happy with him. They might've taken Walthall out as a witness."

"But why'd they do _that_ to the guy? The drowning, my God, it took _time_. What the hell does it mean?"

Harper sighed wearily. "It's kinda messy, I'll grant you, but I've seen worse."

The judge was nodding in equally weary agreement, while all around them the slow tedium of evidence gathering ground on.

Mark couldn't quite shake the inkling of doubt. The itch of memory had been there almost since the moment he'd first seen Romney's grotesque look of horror, staring up out of the water.

Still, he stepped down. Frank was a sensible, competent detective, and the judge was . . . _Hardcastle._

_And you have too damn much imagination. _

"Okay, yeah. I suppose that makes sense." He jammed his hands in his pockets and jerked his chin toward the Coyote, then said. "So, we almost done here? They've got our statements."

"Yeah, kiddo, almost." Hardcastle waved him away. He left them talking quietly. Cop details. The usual. Mark wandered back to the car, still itching.

00000

McCormick drove and they were both pretty quiet. He supposed if it had been anybody else besides the judge, they'd both be sitting in an L.A. county facility awaiting further questioning. Instead, the investigating officers hadn't even fussed about their unauthorized inspection of the crime scene.

Two murders and home before nine. _And still the damn itch._ He slowed down as they headed into what passed for the center of Malibu. He took the car off on the left, an angled side road.

Hardcastle glanced over. "Not burgers again? I thought you looked a little off your feed back there."

"Yeah, um, sorry about that." Mark pulled into the Civic Center lot and parked.

"Records?" Hardcastle frowned. "They close at six. I was gonna look 'em up tomorrow."

"Not the courthouse," McCormick said patiently. "The library. It'll only take a sec," he added as he climbed out.

The judge craned his head. "You've got a _library_ card?" he said, in what was probably not supposed to sound like quite so much disbelief.

"Yeah, I'm a resident of the County of Los Angeles; they don't care about the rest." Mark shrugged. "You know, that's about the only kind of credit an ex-con can get," he added with a touch of embarrassment "I haven't had much time to use it _lately_, though."

Hardcastle had settled back into his seat. Mark couldn't help but take a little satisfaction from his look of total bemusement. Then he turned away, and put some hustle into it. The place was closing in less than fifteen minutes.

He was back in less than ten, with two thin volumes that he slipped into the narrow space between the seat and the door. The judge was doing a lousy job of not looking curious, though it seemed obvious that he had no intention of asking about them outright.

"Found what you needed?" he finally asked, after Mark had pulled back onto the PCH.

"Uh-huh."

Silence again, but they were only a mile or so from home, so it didn't last too long. As they pulled up, the judge said, "Maybe pizza. We could have it delivered."

"Ah," Mark climbed out, into the darkness, books snugly out of sight under his left arm. "You go ahead. I'm not all that hungry."

Hardcastle looked at him with thinly-veiled disbelief, maybe even a little concern.

"I'm okay. Really. Just tired—long day. Dead people . . . you know." He nodded toward the gatehouse.

"And you've got some reading to do, huh?"

"Maybe."

"Is it about the case?"

Mark frowned thoughtfully for a moment and then said, "You probably wouldn't think so."

The judge gave this a short grunt, but didn't ask him to spell it out. "Okay," he finally said, "if you change your mind, I'll be up for a while. Got some reading to do myself."

"The Romney file?"

One nod from the older man.

Mark grimaced. "But he's _dead_."

"Yeah," Hardcastle admitted, "but somebody killed him."

00000

He'd talked himself in and out of it a half-dozen times that night, and, at one point, wondered what it was like to be one of those evidence technicians, scurrying from one body to the next, scavenging everything for future reference. It went on and on, he supposed, with no end ever in sight. After a while, did they start to see patterns where there were none? Or maybe it just became just so much routine, piles of little Lucite bags waiting to be filled and processed.

He shook his head and gathered the two books from the floor next to the bed. What was the worst Hardcastle could say? _He already thinks you're an idiot._ He'd decided that didn't matter. And he hoped to God he really was an idiot, and totally wrong in his misapprehensions, because if he wasn't, this thing was a long way from over.

00000

Hardcastle was sitting at the table in the kitchen. The Romney file was closed, but still at his elbow, and he looked like he needed the cup of coffee that he had in his other hand.

Mark muttered his 'good morning' and grabbed a cup off the shelf for himself. He filled it, then sat down across from the man, putting his books to one side. Hardcastle cast a quick glance down but said nothing. His eyebrows had drifted up a ways, though.

"Anything?" McCormick asked casually, nodding toward the file.

"Not much," the judge admitted. Couple of known associates suspected of being in the contracting business. They might be a start. But he coulda hired anybody to do Harleson. It was a rush job."

"Same night service," Mark agreed. He took a long, grateful swig from the cup.

A moment of silence passed, and then Hardcastle said, very casually, "And you? Anything?"

McCormick put the cup back down. He'd been pretty sure about having made up his mind, but now saying it all out loud seemed harder than he'd thought it would be.

"Look," he finally admitted, "you're probably going to think I'm crazy—"

"What else is new?"

_Great start._ Mark bit back a retort that would probably put the whole thing on a downward spiral that would be hard to pull out of. He began again, more directly. "Dante," he said abruptly. "_The Inferno_. You know, the circles of hell, all those people being punished for this and that. You remember that one?"

"Sort of," Hardcastle frowned in puzzlement. "I was a history and political science major, not literature."

"Okay, well, nobody remembers which circle is which. That's why there's Cliff Notes." He took the thinner of the two books and pushed it across the table.

Hardcastle picked it up, riffled through it, and said, "What does this have to do with Sylvester Romney? I don't think he was too big on Italian literature either."

"Okay," Mark leaned forward, elbows on the table, coffee forgotten, "will ya just listen?" He took the judge's silence for a yes.

"See, yesterday, I dunno, must've been when I first saw him, staring up like that. It reminded me of something."

"Something from Dante?" Hardcastle asked. It sounded like he was trying to keep his tone flat, maybe even non-judgmental.

"Yeah. I know. Very weird. It was sort of a memorable image, you gotta admit, what the hell, even you said it was some sort of message, right? Such a stupid, _ugly_ way to kill somebody."

Hardcastle nodded.

"And it reminded me of something out of this," he tapped the other book, still at his side on the table. "Only I didn't remember exactly which circle it was, but that was one of the punishments, to be submerged, in the river Styx, one of the slimier parts, always looking up."

Hardcastle had the booklet open now. "Circle five—the Wrathful and the Sullen?"

"Yeah. Romney was angry all the time. That's what you said. Sullen, too, I'll bet. All that money and power and he can't keep his girlfriend in line. Very sullen."

The judge looked dubious, but he hadn't closed the book yet.

"Okay, turn back to Circle Four."

"Misers and the Avaricious?"

"Yeah, see what happens to them?"

"They get rocks thrown at them?"

"Yup, that'd be Walthall, the money guy, see? And circle Three—Gluttons."

Hardcastle filled back, scanned a few lines, then looked up. "Buried in garbage?"

"_Exactly_. Though I don't think being greedy with the donuts was Piggy's main offense. Might've been more on account of him getting too grabby with his boss's girl."

"And Shelia," the judge frowned and shook his head, "but she was a _suicide_."

"I dunno, Judge. Look at Circle Two. Lust. And they get thrown around in the wind. I guess falling off a penthouse balcony was the closest they could come. I'm not even gonna toss in her stage name as exhibit 'B'. That's probably just a coincidence."

"The note—"

"Well, the lab's not done with it yet, are they? Has it been authenticated?"

Hardcastle's frown had taken on a permanent quality. "I dunno. Not sure how hard they'd look. That handwriting stuff is iffier than you think."

"So, your suicides might not be suicides."

"Even Bainbridge? I don't think Dante knew about cyanide."

Mark slumped back a little, letting out a breath. "Yeah, that one is the softest. It's the vestibule, the doorway to hell, they don't get poisoned, nothing like that. But they're there because they were uncommitted, on the fence."

"Well, Harry fell off on the wrong side," the judge said sharply.

"I suppose," McCormick nodded. "Anyway, for them it's worms . . . maggots."

"That's what it is for everybody, eventually," Hardcastle grimaced, "nothing too specific there."

"And they chase a blank banner," Mark added. Hardcastle looked a little blank himself. "A _white_ banner." Still no response. "The _sheets, _remember?"

There was one further beat. Then the judge snorted and said, "That's a reach. You _are_ crazy."

McCormick crossed his arms and leaned back further. "I knew you'd say that."

But Hardcastle had his nose back down in the booklet. "So what's next?"

"Um," Mark hesitated. "Circle Six is Heretics."

The judge looked up, then shook his head and closed the book. "Heretics, huh? Not hit men? There, see? That one's not going to work. And Harry and Shelia were suicides, plain and simple, no literary gobbledygook. Nice try, though. I appreciate it. And I don't know why you're so intent on it not being obvious—I mean the suicides—you weren't the one doing the stirring and poking."

"Okay," McCormick sighed. "I honestly hope you're right and I'm wrong, and Frank comes over here this afternoon and says they have a hot lead on something." He frowned doubtfully. "And thanks for listening."

"I called you crazy."

"Yeah, twice," Mark said quietly, "but you listened anyway." He took the booklet back and set it atop the other volume, then slid the small stack off to the side and got up to fix breakfast.

00000

Two uneventful days passed. There were no apparent leads, hot or otherwise, at least none that Frank saw fit to inform them of. Mark set his reading aside, and, by day three, was almost ready to return them to the library.

He was in the kitchen again that morning when the phone rang. It was Frank, but not sounding too excited, even by Frank standards. When Hardcastle didn't pick up the other phone, Mark said, 'Wait a sec; he's probably in the basement."

"The files, huh?"

"Yeah," Mark leaned on the counter and listened for footsteps on the stairs. "He's digging. He hasn't quit." He didn't mention his own nearly-abandoned theory. "You got anything new?" He added hopefully.

"No, well," Harper hesitated, "not exactly."

"Not another body," Mark pinched the bridge of his nose. "Nobody burned to death, nothing like that."

There was a brief, puzzled silence from the other end. Frank was apparently considering the segue. He finally answered, "No . . . nothing like that. But don't drag him up out of the basement. This is just a request. The Mob Task Force is back in on this one. Park and his guys."

"Yeah, I figured."

"They want to make sure this doesn't go any further, so they gotta figure out what's what. They brought in a consultant; one of those criminal-behavior profiling guys. He wants to meet with Milt, see if there's anything in his files that everyone else missed."

"When?"

"Soon as possible. There's factions, ya know? We might be sitting on a powder keg here."

"Like I said—just a sec, I'll get him." Mark started to put the phone down, but heard Frank say 'wait' again, a little louder.

He put the phone back up to his ear in time to hear him add, "Listen, just tell me if he's gonna be there this afternoon, say about one?"

"Frank, you're gonna get me in trouble—"

"No I won't. We'll just drop by," Harper said coaxingly. "You know how he is. I'll tell him about this guy, and then he'll say he's got some prior engagement, and then he won't answer the phone for a while. He thinks this psychology stuff is all voodoo, and he hates sharing his files with people he doesn't trust."

Mark thought about that for a minute. The voodoo part he'd gotten right away. He felt the same way about shrinks. But the second bit—who the judge shared the files with—that had never occurred to him.

He shook loose from this as Frank repeated his request, "So just get him to stick around the house after lunch. You can do that, can't you?"

"Maybe," Mark said reluctantly. Then he hedged his bet with, "Unless something comes up."

"Come on, rotate the tires, change the oil. You spend half your time underneath those cars anyway."

"Not all three at _once_. I'm not _that _ambitious." Mark paused and listened for steps again. "Okay, he finally said, very quietly, "I don't think he's got anything planned. I'll let you know if something comes up. Save you a trip out, anyway."

He said good-bye and hung up, feeling a twinge of guilt, though he wasn't sure exactly why. Maybe it had something to do with the sudden realization that there was a short list for who had access to the files, and he was on it.

But Hardcastle was the one always talking about cooperation among law enforcement organizations. And, yeah, they were more free-lance than organized, but the same rules still ought to apply, he supposed. And what was one shrink, more or less, on the team? It might be entertaining to see Hardcase take him on.

00000

Still, when one o'clock crept near—and he had studiously avoided confirming it with more than the occasional glance at the clock in the kitchen—he snuck out the back door and did some unsolicited pool skimming. He realized he'd been avoiding the task for the past few days. He also realized that putting it off was only going to lead to a situation that more closely resembled the murky flashbacks he was trying to avoid.

He heard the car pull up, and the doors slamming. He knew his typical response to this would be to slough off whatever chore he was currently engaged in, on the chance that the company would be more interesting. But he stood there, leaning on the pool skimmer for a full two minutes before he finally decided that behaving in an ordinary, unguilty way, was the best course.

Hardcastle already had the guests in the den by the time he arrived. The judge had an unreadable expression, though he waved Mark in. Frank and another man sat in chairs. The judge had apparently been caught unawares. All the Romney-related materials were still out on the desk, along with another half-dozen possibly pertinent files that had been fetched up that morning.

"Dr. Noman, this is my associate, Mark McCormick." The judge said it very coolly, as though he had half a suspicion who knew what already.

Mark nodded at the man, salt-and-pepper haired and his glasses perched too far down on his nose. There was no scrutiny from Noman, and no greeting, as his gaze passed briefly over the guy in work clothes, and then returned to the judge, and back to the matter at hand.

McCormick avoided any eye contact with Frank, who was very much giving the impression he wasn't there at all.

"Of course I've reviewed all the materials in the hands of the police," Noman continued, obviously picking up the thread of the conversation where it had been dropped, "but I'm interested in any additional, less formally acquired information."

Mark winced at the tone, at once both condescending and demanding. He now knew exactly why Frank had wanted to do an end run on this one. He watched the judge even out his expression, the surest sign he knew that there was red hot magma right below the surface.

"Lieutenant Harper will tell you that I am always fully cooperative with law enforcement authorities. I seriously doubt that there is anything I have that they aren't already aware of."

"Awareness is something that isn't always complete, even when the information is available," Noman prattled on, apparently completely unaware that he was sitting across the desk from a totally pissed-off ex-judge.

Or maybe he _was_ aware, Mark thought, and just didn't give a damn.

"And _I_," Noman made a slight emphasis on the pronoun, reinforcing the image of self-absorption, "have an idea about the case—a paradigm, if you will."

In the momentary silence that followed, McCormick could almost hear the judge's dental enamel under assault.

The theatrical pause complete, Noman drew in a breath, "It's altogether possible that I will see some value in the facts you have gathered, something that had been overlooked, something that will support my theory."

"And just what would your theory be, Doctor Noman?" Hardcastle muttered tightly.

Mark gathered, from the equally tight expression on Frank's face, that the lieutenant had already heard at least part of it, and was suspecting it might be the flash point for his friend. Noman, still appearing oblivious to his reception, smiled the smile of the superior theorist.

"It's my contention that a cluster of crimes such as these, while divergent in their apparent mechanisms, and appearing not to share any consistencies, are actually the work of a single person, who is following a predetermined pattern." Noman had assumed the supercilious tone of a lecturer.

He paused, as if to see if everyone was still keeping up. Hardcastle was rubbing one temple in quick, impatient circles.

Noman perched his elbows on the arms of his chair, and tented his fingertips thoughtfully. "I believe the key to the pattern lies in a fourteenth century work of the Italian poet, Dante."

Mark jerked his head up, just in time to see Hardcastle's mouth fall open, silently. That lasted for a split second, followed by a bellowed, "Not you, _too_? And McCormick's been carrying the damn Cliff Notes around with him."

The doctor looked nonplussed for the first time. His eyes shot sideward, suddenly taking in the guy in the grass-stained denims with a new look. It was more shock than respect, Mark concluded.

"_Cliff_ Notes?" Noman said, obviously grabbing his surprise by the throat and shoving it back down under a layer of barely-concealed disdain. "And when did you stumble across the connection, may I ask?"

Mark ducked his chin. "When we saw the last one . . . Romney." He had a feeling that he wasn't even going to get half-credit, on account of the Cliff Notes. He resisted the urge to point out that he'd also plowed through the Longfellow translation, at least the first eleven Cantos.

"Well," Noman sniffed, "I suppose it was fairly evident by then."

"Evident my foot," Hardcastle grumbled. "It's a pile of crap. The first two were suicides. And if it is some crazy connect-the-dots killer, what is the point of all this folderol? Does he _want_ to get caught?"

McCormick couldn't help notice that Hardcastle was at least arguing with the psychologist. Noman seemed to take the doubt in stride, as though he'd been expecting it. He launched back into lecture mode.

"With a pattern killer like this, 'connecting-the-dots' as you put it, becomes the all-consuming passion. The original motivations may become obscured under the need to complete the design. Extraordinary risks may be taken to fulfill this goal—to do the 'correct' thing in the proper way."

"So, all these fancy curlicues are just signs. This guy _wants_ us to know what he's doing?"

"Well," Noman looked thoughtful, "yes and no. Like any artist, the person executing the design would like it to be noticed. At the same time, the perpetrator may be intensely protective of his work-in-progress, may resent anyone who sees the pattern before it is fully emerged—before he _chooses_ to reveal it."

"You make this guy sound like some sort of creative genius." There was disgust in the judge's tone. "He kills people, at least three of them he has. The first two still look like suicides to me." Then he shrugged wearily. "And even if some of this is right, how does all this theorizing help us figure out who the guy _is_? Or, more important, what he's going to do next?" Hardcastle shook his head. "A heretic, burning. That's supposed to be circle number six, right? So what the hell does _that_ mean?"

For once, Noman was silent. He had dropped his hands into his lap and had laced the fingers together loosely. "Perhaps," he said slowly, "it might be better to look at the reason 'why' a bit more closely. As I said, it may become obscure, but it might not be completely obliterated."

Hardcastle gave up a frustrated sigh and gestured for the man to continue.

"In this case, the first two victims, or suicides, if you will, alleged that they were persecuted by you. This may in fact represent the projection of the killer—someone who also feels threatened by you and who assigns that feeling to others.

"At the same time," Noman cocked his head, as though he was working it all out as he went along, "the killer is also, in some twisted way, doing your bidding. I have heard of your reputation as a proponent of law and order in the strictest sense."

"_I_ didn't want those people dead—"

"Not even Romney? A man who killed brutally and repeatedly?"

"It doesn't work that way, Noman. That's why we have the law, to deal with guys like Romney."

"Well," the psychologist smiled patiently, "you and I understand that, but perhaps this killer had an imprecise grasp of the concept. Perhaps he sees himself as working for the greater weal. Maybe he is even trying to 'out-Hardcastle Hardcastle'."

"So which is it, I'm persecuting him or he wants me to admire him?" the judge growled.

"It might be both," Noman said smugly. "We ought to, therefore, be looking for someone with a connection to you, and a more than passing familiarity with the case. Perhaps someone to whom you are an authority figure."

Mark wasn't sure he had ever encountered silence in the form of a solid before.


	3. Chapter 3

**Hellbound/**L.M.Lewis

**Chapter 3**

"Crap," Hardcastle huffed, "Like I said."

It had really only been a second or two; it had just _felt_ much longer. Long enough for Mark to thrash around mentally to try and establish exactly where he'd been during the intervals that would be in question. Now he let out a long breath that he hoped went unnoticed.

Harper, of course, got the full implication of what had been said, even if Noman had just thrown the thing out without any awareness of who he was pointing at.

Now Frank fidgeted slightly—the number of people he was willing to make eye contact with was dropping rapidly. "Might be 'crap', Milt, but it's gonna be official crap pretty soon. Dr. Noman here, will be submitting his findings to the head of the task force tomorrow."

McCormick was fairly certain that Frank hadn't heard the last part of the theory before just a moment ago. In fact, it sounded almost as if Noman had supplied it off the cuff, in which case it might not be too late to correct his trajectory. Mark only hoped it could be done without drawing too much attention to who the target currently seemed to be.

A couple more seconds of silence passed, with Noman waiting expectantly for the judge to reconsider his original, hasty assessment. Hardcastle sat there looking aggravated. It must have only taken an instant for the man to decide that he and Frank weren't going to be the only two people for whom the shrink's description would bring a blinding flash of recognition, but now he seemed to be giving his options a little thought.

He finally spoke again; still brusque, but slightly more tempered. "Listen, there's a whole bunch of people out there who know me and maybe I'm not the easiest guy to get along with—"

Mark couldn't help it, but he did at least manage to half-stifle the snort. The judge shot him a glaring glance and Noman seemed to pick up on the interchange.

"But there are probably only a few," the psychologist gave Mark a longer, more considering look, "maybe only _one_, who—"

Frank jumped into it abruptly. "Mark was _here_ when I called about Shelia Storm's death. That was only a little while after it happened . . ." Harper frowned, obviously trying to figure out _how_ little a while and what the transit time between the estate and the victim's building might be.

"He was here with me all that evening," Hardcastle finished for him.

Noman was sitting up straighter, now that he had an actual suspect to go with his conjecture. "But, as you said, either one or both of the first two victims might have been suicides."

Mark thought the guy had let go of his original set-up pretty damn easily. This was someone who was absolutely willing to adjust the facts on the fly to fit his theory.

"The perpetrator might merely have gotten his _idea_ from the circumstances of the first two deaths," Noman continued. "He may have only started taking an active part in the deaths with the third event."

_Okay, that narrows down the opportunities for alibis._ Mark swallowed once and stared very hard at the floor in front of him.

"He was _here_," the judge said firmly, "on the estate, with me, the afternoon Romney and Walthall were killed." McCormick noticed he'd skipped right over the Harleson murder. That one was impossible.

And now Mark said absolutely nothing. There'd been at least four hours between Hardcastle's original call to Romney and the time they'd left for the appointment, and the mobster's home was less than twenty minutes away.

On top of that, Hardcastle had spent almost all of that interval in the basement with his files. He wouldn't have known if his _associate_ was on the grounds or not. Mark wasn't sure if the judge had thought it through to that part, or if he would admit to it, should the questioning get more detailed.

For now Noman merely nodded and appeared to be willing to move on. He didn't even seem to think there ought to be any awkwardness about it.

_Oh, but by tomorrow it'll be official crap._

Mark suppressed a shudder, fueled by previous experience with the way the law enforcement mentality worked. Previous guilt counted for a lot in the system, and it didn't matter how different the earlier crime was. Add to that the natural bureaucratic desire to have things over and done with—to close the books—and the charm of a clever theory . . . _damn it all for coming up with that first, and Hardcastle blurting out that you had. That'll look bad, too._

But the judge seemed calm, and now he was at least feigning a spirit of cooperation. The Romney file had been passed across the desk, and Noman was even being given permission to borrow what he thought relevant. It might have been an attempt to win his trust, Mark thought, or maybe the quickest way to be rid of the man. McCormick appreciated the effort, either way.

The man was finally on his feet, smiling and nodding his thanks. Frank was up, too, looking relieved to be going. Mark stayed put as Hardcastle saw the other two to the door. He was still in the chair when the judge returned.

"Well . . . that was _interesting_." McCormick said with very little attempt to hide his worry.

He looked up and caught a glimpse of what Hardcastle had done a pretty good job of concealing while company had been present. The man was seething.

"It's a damn pile of crap." He'd dropped down in his chair behind the desk. "And you had to come up with it _first_." The judge shook his head in what appeared to be disbelief, then leaned forward, elbows on the desk and fixed McCormick with a look. "You don't suppose it's _true_, do ya?"

"Which part?"

"The first part, dammit. I know _you_ didn't do it."

Mark almost had to smile at this rather aggravated vote of confidence. But as to the rest, he gave a long shrug. "I hope it's not a case of great minds thinking alike. Hearing that guy say it out loud made me realize why it was such a hard sell when I was peddling it."

"Well, you were more convincing." Hardcastle let out a heavy sigh and worked the bridge of his nose pretty hard with his fingers, as though he had a headache he just couldn't shake.

Then he sat back suddenly and said, "From now on, you stick close to home. No trips out on your own."

From this Mark gathered that the judge no longer thought it was all over, maybe he was even _hoping_ it wasn't. _Just one more murder, that's all we need._ But it wouldn't be just one more, if the theory was right and neither fate nor the LAPD intervened.

"You want the Cliff Notes or the Longfellow translation?" he offered.

"Longfellow, huh? 'By the shores of Gitche Gumee' Longfellow?"

McCormick frowned. "I think there's only the one."

"So, does it rhyme?"

Mark shook his head.

"Gimme the notes."

Mark nodded and got to his feet wearily. He was up the steps and in the doorway before he stopped and half-turned back. "What about at night? I could be out hunting down heretics at night; you'd never know."

"_Heretics_." Hardcastle rolled his eyes. "See, that's what I mean. A pile of crap . . . Okay, you take the guest bedroom. I'll tie a string of tin cans to your ankle maybe. It's either that or I have Frank find you a bunk down in the lock-up."

This time Mark really did shudder. "No. No thanks. Tin cans, handcuffs if necessary."

"Like that'd do any good."

00000

Nervous tedium, and too much togetherness. By the following afternoon, Mark was starting to wonder if the next murder might take place at Gull's Way. It was worry, pure and simple, at least on his side, and he thought maybe on Hardcastle's, too. He'd seen the man twitch every time the phone rang, but he'd decided to let him do the answering for a while, figuring it might as well be him who intercepted the one requesting that his parolee come in for an interview.

It was only as afternoon wore into evening, and the logical time for official action had passed, that he felt himself relax just a notch or two. He made dinner. He even managed to eat some of it, and he noticed the judge had, too.

He finished the dishes, and joined Hardcastle in the den, feeling as weary as if he'd dug ditches all day. He found the man leaning back in his chair, legs crossed, turned partway round and looking out the window at the darkness.

He slouched in, trying not to interrupt whatever was going on in the guy's head. He slipped into a chair.

"What?" Hardcastle asked, after a couple more moments had passed.

"I didn't say anything."

"I know, but you were thinking awfully loud. I just could quite make it out. So . . . _what_?"

"Oh, I was just wondering. You think maybe they didn't buy into what Noman was saying? Or maybe they aren't even considering me?" He couldn't help the edge of pleading hopefulness that had crept into the last part.

Hardcastle held one hand out flat and waggled it, just twice. Then he sighed. "Wouldn't count on it. Committees, ya know—coming to the wrong conclusion might take 'em a little while, but that doesn't mean they won't get there eventually."

Mark felt his shoulders slump and he was sure his face revealed at least part of his anxiety, because Hardcastle hastily amended his position, adding, "But you got nothing to worry about, kiddo. I'd say that's a pretty solid alibi you got for Romney and Walthall."

McCormick swallowed. Even now, after almost a year, he wasn't always sure what was being left unsaid intentionally. Every once in a while the judge seemed to operate on a need-to-know basis that didn't even include himself.

Still, this time out, Mark thought it might be better to be up-front about things. It could be that the judge hadn't quite thought this through.

"That afternoon," he started, then hesitated. The judge was just giving him a puzzled look. Mark shook his head once and pushed forward again. "You were downstairs going through files. You were down there for a few _hours_."

"Yeah. So?"

"You don't even hear the phone ring when you're down there. I could have been . . . _anywhere_."

"But you weren't. You were up here slouching around, the way you always are when there's stuff to be done and you don't much feel like doing it."

Mark frowned. He didn't know how to make it any clearer except by saying it straight out.

"Listen," he said, very intently, "They'll haul me downtown. Then they'll pull you aside and start asking about the specifics. They'll want to know _exactly_ where you were, and _exactly_ how much of the time you knew where I was. What you said to Noman isn't going to be enough." He paused again, just for a half-second, and then he said, "The _truth_ won't be enough."

Hardcastle looked back at him, just as intently, and said, "So, you think I should lie?"

"_No_." He was surprised at that. He shook his head and revised it slightly. "Well, maybe not. Not _exactly_." He ran his fingers through his hair. "It's some kinda damn nightmare. No," he finally said, "I don't want you to lie. Probably wouldn't work, anyway. You don't get enough practice." He managed a quick, small smile at that. It faded almost as swiftly. "I just want you to realize, I'm not out of the woods yet, and from here it looks pretty damn dark."

"Yeah, lying probably wouldn't work," Hardcastle heaved a deep breath. "But I'm not as bad at it as you think," he added defensively. "It's just that there's guys down there who figure I _would_ do it. Maybe I'm not all that hot as an alibi in the first place."

"So, maybe you _should_ have Frank find me a nice cell. Maybe I can be a material witness or something," Mark said glumly.

"Let's not put ideas in their heads. People tend to look more guilty once they're behind bars."

Mark's eyebrows went up. "You _admit_ that?"

Hardcastle shrugged. "Just human nature, that's all. Wouldn't need the presumption of innocence if people's minds actually worked that way."

"_Hah_." McCormick sat back—again the momentary smile, again it was pursued and shot down by worry. "And in the meantime . . .?"

"We sit tight."

"You think there'll be another murder?"

The expression that briefly crossed Hardcastle's face was perilously close to wistful. "Don't know," he said, "maybe a little straightforward mob retaliation—something with a semi-automatic in the back of a warehouse. Not a goddamn heretic, I hope."

"Yeah," Mark added with heartfelt sincerity on both counts, then wondered which circle of hell accommodated people who hoped for just one murder more.

00000

He woke early again the next morning, and slightly confused by his surroundings, though he recognized it for one of the guest bedrooms in the main house, and the why of it came crashing back down on him only a moment later. It was barely daylight. He frowned, wondering if there was any hope of getting back to sleep and then deciding the answer was no.

He supposed he ought to stay put until Hardcastle was up, but that seemed just as silly as the rest of this ritual of close confinement. He sat up, got his feet on the floor, and headed down to the kitchen.

He was partway into making that vital first pot of coffee when the phone rang. He froze where he was standing, though he was pretty sure his heart hadn't actually stopped.

Hardcastle couldn't have been too deeply asleep; it was picked up on the first ring. Mark resisted for a few seconds longer, then decided that a call at this hour was almost undoubtedly his business, too. He put the carafe down and picked up the receiver, gently and just in time to hear Hardcastle say, 'When?'

"'Bout a half-hour ago." It was Frank. "You comin' down?"

"Yeah," the judge muttered. "It'll take a couple minutes." Mark heard rustling, the man getting out of bed. "What time is it?"

"Ah, 6:25 . . . you'll bring Mark?"

Hardcastle grunted an affirmative.

McCormick wasn't sure if Harper's question had fit under 'wanted for further questioning' or whether he, too, had already concluded that Mark now needed a rolling alibi. He heard the lieutenant hang up, without anything more than the 'good-bye' of a harried man.

He hung up as well, using no particular precautions. He heard Hardcastle on the stairs a moment later.

"You heard that?" the man asked as he came into the kitchen.

"Not the first bit," Mark admitted.

"Eternal Peace Cemetery. Someone driving by this morning noticed flames, called it in. It was a family crypt, an old one."

"Not much to burn in one of those."

"There is when you pour in a couple gallons of gasoline and toss a match. They said the flames were shooting up through the grating about six feet. There's bodies, of course, but they're still trying to sort out what's what. Frank says at least one is fresh, well, not so fresh anymore. But he wasn't in a box, at any rate."

"They got an ID on him? Any known religious leanings?" Mark asked wearily. "Not a defrocked priest or anything like that?"

"They're still working on it."

"Well, I've only been up for a couple of minutes. Honest. Haven't even had any coffee yet."

00000

Mark drove and they took turns yawning. It was now clear daylight, and the entrance to the cemetery was made obvious, even from a distance, by the collection of official vehicles that were gathered there. The crypt was obvious, too; its white marble now stained sooty black along the front and above the barred but broken window on the one visible side. Mark pulled himself up out of the car and took it all in. The coroner's wagon was off to one side. The door of the crypt appeared to have been forced. It was now off its hinges completely and set aside.

A technician and a plainclothes guy were bent over something on the ground. It took Mark a moment to recognize it for a corpse. Hardcastle was already out of the car and heading that way. He was intercepted by Harper, with Parks closing in right behind him. Mark decided reluctance could only be interpreted the wrong way. He finished extracting himself from the Coyote and went to join the others.

Parks gave him a quick, pointed look as he sauntered up. He'd obviously been talking and now continued on, "So somebody leaked word to the press and the rumor is it's on page five this morning as 'The 'Inferno' Killer'. This'll probably bump it to page one in the late edition. All we were missing up till now were some open flames," he added bitterly.

"And the body?" Hardcastle was obviously trying to drag the discussion back to the facts.

Parks frowned. "No ID yet. No wallet. He went in alive and most likely conscious. The passerby reported hearing screams." The detective grimaced. "There was a chain across the door handle; the original lock was rusted through. The door must've opened without too much persuasion: victim inside, door chained, gas in through the broken window, match. That's it."

"But," Hardcastle insisted, "the murderer had to have known that in advance, about the door, I mean. Must've hung around here some, checked things out beforehand."

"We're looking into all that, Milt." Harper had a somewhat peeved expression, but his gaze was directed slightly up and past Hardcastle. Mark turned to follow it and saw Dr. Noman, standing a little ways off, looking at everything with rapt attention. He appeared to have arrived recently.

Seeing them gathered there, Noman nodded once briskly and strolled over. "Good morning gentlemen." There was a particular nod in Park's direction. "I trust there'll be no more equivocating about the direction this investigation ought to be heading in."

"We don't even know who the hell the victim _is_," Harper said.

"He's a man in a burning tomb. I think you'll find other connections to the current case, once you've identified him."

Noman looked almost satisfied with the development. Mark would have been appalled, if he hadn't himself been wishing very hard for a gangland shooting the night before.

"What time did it occur?" the psychologist asked curiously.

"Just before dawn," Harper said.

Noman shifted his gaze to McCormick, who cast a quick glance at Parks before answering the unasked question, quickly and quietly. "I was at home, asleep."

Noman cocked his head at this and smiled thinly, as if he'd expected not much more.

"We're forty-five minutes from the cemetery," Hardcastle interjected. "I clocked it. Frank's call came in to us at six twenty-five. What time did this get called in?"

Park didn't need to consult his notebook this time. "Five fifty-five. That's when the dispatchers were alerted. They relayed it to me. And I called Harper right after that."

"Which fits," the judge added sharply. "Sunrise right around six this time of year. I think you're gonna have to open up your suspect list a little more, Noman."

The psychologist smiled thinly. "Well, that's not really my department, is it? I just come up with the general outline. I've already indicated that the profile includes risk-taking behavior. That looks like quite the fast vehicle you have over there, Mr. McCormick. Anyway," he sighed wearily, "it's up to the Task Force to implement or reject my suggestions."

"We haven't ruled anyone in, _or _out." Parks sounded like the soul of caution, or a man who might've said some things the day before that he wished he could take back. "Like Harper said, we haven't even ID'd the damn victim. I think an arrest would be kinda premature."

Noman nodded one more time and walked away, sidling in for a closer look at the body. Parks shook his head and said nothing more before he departed as well.

Frank was frowning. "It's a good thing the doc is so abrasive. He kinda takes the pressure off of you in the 'aggravating your colleagues' department, Milt."

"The hell with that. I'm always cooperative. Damn collegial. You know that," the judge said grumpily. "If the damn cemetery was just five minutes further out—"

"So, what's next?" Harper interrupted.

"The Violent." Mark said solemnly. "It gets more complicated. Three flavors: rivers of boiling blood, Harpies, and burning plains. I think things might get a little symbolic."

"They haven't already?" Hardcastle asked. "That was a swimming pool, not the River Styx."

McCormick didn't have time to answer before Parks, now standing with an evidence tech nearer to the entrance, waved them over. Noman was still inspecting the remains and hadn't noticed the summons. As they approached, Parks gestured to something the gloved tech was holding.

"Got some ID here, a wallet, found by the gate." There was something in the man's expression that seemed to indicate he wasn't happy about this development.

Frank leaned in to study the driver's license the tech had extracted. "Shit." He looked over his shoulder in the direction of the now-covered remains. "It was Joe. Joe Henebery." Frank shook his head. "I sure as hell didn't recognize him."

"There wasn't much to recognize," Parks said grimly.

Hardcastle just stood there, looking equally grim. Mark nudged him and half-whispered. "Who—?"

"Assistant D.A.," Hardcastle muttered. Then he looked at Frank. "He was involved in the Romney case. I remember seeing his name on a couple of the affidavits. Dammit, I haven't got the file along, but I'm pretty sure of it. Somebody should notify them, and we ought to find out what he was working on more recently."

"He's not with the D.A,'s office anymore." Frank frowned. "Not for, what? Maybe a year now?"

Parker nodded. "He was up and coming, too. Kept his conviction rate all bright and shiny. Never took anything into court that he wasn't sure was a slam-dunk."

"Yeah," Frank agreed. "Then he quit. Somebody said he got a nice fat six-figure job as a corporate lawyer."

"Oh, yeah." Mark let out a breath and, before he could stop himself, added, "Sounds like heresy to me."

00000

He got the lecture most of the way home, which was forty-five minutes by the clock. Pretty impressive considering that it consisted, in multiple variations but the one consistent, overriding theme, of Hardcastle telling him he ought to know by now when to keep his mouth shut. They were back on the PCH and only a few minutes from the estate, when Mark got his first couple of words in edgewise.

"Maybe I was the one who said it, but everyone else was thinking it. _Especially_ you. Besides, the guy cleans out his desk in the prosecutor's office and waltzes into the corner office of a big firm. Maybe we ought to be looking at what _else_ he did to get that plum."

Hardcastle put his forehead in his hand. He looked like he was trying to maintain a stern visage, but it seemed to McCormick that he liked the idea more than he was willing to admit.

"Okay," the judge finally gave it one reluctant nod as they turned into the drive. "_Might_ be so. Not proven guilty yet, though. So far he's just a victim. But I'm just saying, it shouldn'ta been _you _pointing out the possibilities—not with Noman breathing down our necks and trying to make you look like some sort of vigilante nut-case."

"I didn't even know who Henebery _was_."

"Doesn't matter. You've had access to the files, and hell, maybe you've been sitting around listening to me complain about the guy's career choices for a year now; that's how Noman'll spin it. And he'll hint that you were rolling out before dawn and going off to the dump, and now the cemetery—"

"This is a _fantasy_."

"Well, I know that, and _you_ know that, but maybe it would help if you'd stop trying to look so damn _eager_ to connect the dots. We've already got to get 'em to swallow the idea that you just happened to notice the Dante thing before their profile guy did—"

"So that's it, huh?" McCormick snapped it off bitterly. They were stationary now, parked by the front steps for almost a minute already and neither man attempting to get out. Mark shook his head. "I couldn't _possibly_ have connected those dots unless I put 'em down on the paper myself first, huh? Okay, well, then I should be off the hook. Can't have it both ways, can they? Too dumb to see the pattern but smart enough to have thought it up in the first place. Shit."

He lifted himself up out of the seat. Hardcastle was still sitting there, finally silent. Part of Mark saw it for what it was—a stupid fight between two people who had already had too long a day when it wasn't even nine o'clock in the morning yet.

He had both feet on the ground, though he was still braced against the sill, arms crossed, with his back to the judge. The silence was somehow harder to deal with than the long, ragging diatribe he'd had to put up with for most of the drive home. He finally let out a sigh, but it was Hardcastle who spoke first.

"I didn't say that." Then he paused, as though he was trying to remember exactly what he _had_ said. "But you gotta admit, the whole thing is kinda weird. Look, Parks must not have even believed Noman yesterday. I'll bet that's why they didn't call you in for a little talk."

Mark frowned worriedly to himself and finally said, "It's okay, you know . . . you not believing me, I mean. I wasn't even sure myself at first, if it was real." He looked back over his shoulder at the older man. "And, anyway, that was pretty good this morning with the fifty minutes and the time of sunrise and the phone calls and all that. Sounded reasonable to me."

"Well, Parks didn't whip out a pair of cuffs, so we're okay for now." Hardcastle was getting up out of the car slowly, like a man who was tired.

"Is it time for the holding cell, yet?" Mark asked quietly.

The judge thought about that one for a moment but then shook his head.

"Okay," McCormick pushed up, away from the car and trudged toward the front door. He looked back over his shoulder again. "But it _is_ time for breakfast. Can't argue on an empty stomach."

00000

He'd been right, Mark decided, after they'd both put away a decent breakfast. He'd even had an appetite, despite the early-morning crime scene. He thought maybe he'd eventually wind up like those evidence techs—all in a day's work. He hoped he wasn't going to get that much practice.

McCormick eased forward in his chair and made a move to get up and clear the table. Hardcastle was still sitting across from him, looking thoughtful and a little removed. He glanced up as Mark cleared his throat and started to reach for his plate.

"You know, I've been thinking," the judge said quietly.

"Looks like it." Mark was standing now. "Hey," he smiled ruefully, "if it's about what I said out there—"

"Nah," Hardcastle waved that one away, "we've had better fights than that over who gets the sports section first. No, I was thinking about the whole approach. Our timing stinks."

Mark set the stack of dishes in the sink and turned to look back at him again.

"Well, see," Hardcastle gestured, "we're letting this guy call all the shots. He kills somebody; we run and look."

"Maybe that's partly on account of nobody realizing there _was_ a guy calling the shots," Mark said.

"Okay, don't start up on me again."

McCormick opened his mouth, then shut it and shook his head once.

"I'm just saying," the judge smiled and leaned forward, elbows on the table, "it'd be nice if we got there once ahead of the killing, if we figured one out _before_ the fact."

"How? This guy makes up the rules, picks the when and the where and the who. It makes some kind of weird sense _afterwards_ but, come _on_—"

"Okay, well, maybe the next one is a little easier."

"You're kidding, right? 'The Violent'? We're talking about organized crime, here. They're _all_ violent. Heck, Romney would have qualified big time if he hadn't already been tagged."

"Yeah," Hardcastle nodded in thoughtful agreement, "but think about it, even in the mob they've got specialists."

"Hit men, enforcers?"

Hardcastle nodded again. "Exactly. And, you know, they've always been kind of a hobby for me, like some people follow baseball—who's getting traded to whom, who's got a hot arm, who's going back down to the minors."

"You keep score?"

"Yeah. . . rumors, mostly. Trends. You never know when something's going to firm up into admissible evidence. Got a file-cabinet full downstairs."

"How we going to figure out which one?"

"It's three, right?"

Mark frowned. "Most likely. I'm just guessing here."

"Yeah, well, I read that bit last night, too. Three seems like a good bet. And that fits together with what I've been thinking about Romney's murder."

Mark sat back down and gave him his undivided attention.

"See, that whole thing at Romney's house, didn't that strike you as kinda strange?"

"You mean beyond the obvious—chaining a guy up in his swimming pool and watching him drown?"

"Okay, yeah, beyond that. Think about it. The mechanics for one thing. Sure Walthall's a bookkeeper; he might let somebody sneak up behind him and bash him over the head, but Romney, now, he's a shark, and pretty near the top of the food chain. Nobody gets the drop on someone like him."

"But somebody did."

"Not one guy, not likely. And, like I said, just the mechanics of it. Someone had to get him into that pool. There must've already been some water in it, couldn't have filled it from scratch, not even halfway, between the time I talked to him, and when we found him dead."

Mark nodded at that.

"So, I'm figuring at least three guys. One to hold the gun on him, maybe one—a pretty big one—to just keep him in position, and one more, and he musta pulled the short straw, to get down in the water that was already standing there and fasten things down."

"Hired killers?"

"Looks that way. And they must've been ones that Romney trusted. Guys he'd used before."

"You've got a list of those?"

"I can make a few educated guesses."

"But," Mark hesitated, "if the killer hired people to take out Romney and Walthall—"

"Heck, maybe even Piggy, too; it's possible. He would've been pretty big for one man to handle."

"_Great_," McCormick sighed. "There goes all hope of an alibi. Doesn't really matter if I can prove where I was, does it, if I'm bringing in hired guns?"

"Oh," Hardcastle smiled thinly, "not a chance in hell you could afford these guys, even for an ordinary hit. And a contract to take out Romney? That'd be way out of your league. It'd be cash on the barrel, half down, up front."

Mark looked only slightly relieved. "So, our serial killer is hiring help, and he's got deep pockets."

"And whoever he used, there's a good chance he'll be taking them out next, both to further his design, and to neaten up some loose ends."

"So," Mark frowned, "all we have to do is figure out which hit men he used, find 'em, convince 'em that they're on the short list for getting killed, and get them to tell us who hired them."

"Yeah," Hardcastle smiled. "See? Simple."


	4. Chapter 4

**Hellbound**/L.M.Lewis

**Chapter 4**

"Too many hoods, too little time." Mark sat back in the folding chair and ran his fingers through his hair. Though it wasn't entirely hopeless, he'd decided. They'd managed to pare the list down considerably through a combination of attrition and incarceration.

"Been a while since I culled these," Hardcastle had said at one point, with an apologetic sigh.

But even the short list was longer than they'd hoped. When they'd finished trimming it to only the possibles, the judge gave it one long, last, considering gaze.

"This one," he put his finger down with sudden certainty. "I think he's our best bet."

Mark leaned in and read off the name. "Roman Legatta? Okay," he squinted and then shuffled through the untidy heap for the file, "why him?"

"Nothing that's in _there_," Hardcastle waved the files away, "at least not all of it. Legatta and Romney go back a ways. The story was, they had a falling out maybe two years back."

"'Bout the time Shelia's _other _boyfriend got killed?"

"Yeah, 'bout then. Legatta mighta known Bonhavey, mighta disagreed with how it was handled, though if he didn't do the murder, there woulda been plenty of other guys willing to take part of the action."

"So, that's why you think it was him this time? But why would Romney have trusted him enough to let him get close?"

"That's the thing, see, maybe two months ago, Legatta turned up again, and if he was back on Romney's turf, it probably means they'd patched things up. The prodigal returns."

"You think it was all a scam? Legatta was just biding his time? So the wheels were in motion for that long?"

"Who knows? It's possible, or our mastermind bought him out more recently. Loyalty, _hah_." He picked the list up and shook his head. "But, anyway, he's the one I'd start with."

Mark had finally located the relevant file. He thumbed it open, scanned the first page for a moment and then looked up. "Start where?"

"With Frank." Hardcastle shrugged. "What are friends for?" He smiled. "He'll have an address."

00000

Frank did. And he forked it over with only a minimal amount of professional dubiousness. It was a sure sign of increasing desperation, Mark thought. Harper looked on with something approaching envy as Hardcastle said he was just going to run over there and have a little chat with the man.

"Must be nice to fly under the radar. No probable cause, no nexus criteria."

"Yeah, but if I knock on the door, he doesn't have to let me in and there's nothing I can do about it," Hardcastle pointed out.

Frank opened his mouth, as if to say something, but then shut it again without uttering a word. McCormick had a quick and deep suspicion that he might have been thinking something along the lines of 'But that's what Mark's for.'

"Well," Harper finally said, "I think I should go along."

Hardcastle raised one eyebrow.

"Just in case he gives us some unexpected probable cause," Frank added dryly. "I'll stay in the car unless you need me."

There was no arguing with that, especially since they'd all read the same file.

00000

It was an upscale set of townhouses. Mark supposed the neighbors were mostly dentists and executive types. There was a car in the drive, a black Mustang with some nice custom touches. He didn't say 'crime pays,' because he'd decided it also could be pretty pricey.

They stepped up on the porch. McCormick froze where he was, one foot on the top step. He saw Hardcastle ring the bell, and before he could reach out and touch the man's sleeve, the judge had already lifted a hand, impatient to knock. He obviously hadn't seen the slight mis-seating of the door against the jamb.

"It's open," Mark said in an edgy half-whisper.

Hardcastle gave a sharp glance over his shoulder, back at him and then father out, toward the truck, where Frank was still sitting, peering out the passenger-side window. Mark watched him cover that with a quick, natural smile and a nod. Harper was probably far enough away that none of it registered as suspicious behavior.

The judge turned back to the door, knocked firmly enough to nudge it open, and shouted, as softly as humanly possible, "Anybody home?"

By now Mark thought the answer was probably a qualified yes, depending on how one classified human remains. He also knew the lack of an answer to his gentle shout wouldn't discourage Hardcastle, in fact he was itching to get inside that door before Frank could notice something was amiss and rein him in.

Act followed thought. The door swung open under the heavy persuasion of the judge's rap—it might have appeared, from a distance, to be opening from within—and there was sufficient space now to step through. Mark glanced back at Frank, not with enough of a frown to be a betrayal, but not smiling cheerily, either. Then he turned and slipped in carefully without touching any part of what he figured was a crime scene.

There were no immediate signs of a struggle, but enough general untidiness that a minor one could have passed unnoticed. There was also a vague mechanical noise that Mark couldn't quite place but that drew Hardcastle further back into the hallway, and then toward a second half-open door.

This one he nudged with his elbow and the noise, now louder, became more identifiable from its overtones. _A Jacuzzi. _Mark thought. _We're going to surprise a hit man taking a soak. At least he won't armed. Probably._

But he was aware that the judge had called out again, still not very loud, but audible over the rumbling of the water jets. Hardcastle was in the doorway, looking to the left. Mark heard his startled grunt and stepped up behind him, concern overcoming reluctance.

Pink foam almost up to the rim of the tub—it was too damn incongruous but his first thought was bubble bath, and it was a full second before he saw it for what it really was—_blood, frothed up._

The obvious source was nearly submerged in the middle of it, with one damp, hairy arm still languorously draped over the edge, the hand hanging down, dripping slow, pink drops onto the bathmat. The man's head was thrown back, further than ought to be ordinarily possible, with the aid of a deep slash across the front of his neck. The bleeding had stopped.

Mark took a sharp inward breath and unconsciously touched the doorframe to steady himself. The victim's visible parts were pinker than the foam. _Scalded_.

He realized he'd been focusing down pretty hard, avoiding taking in the big picture. Hardcastle had turned. He was facing him and saying something that he was apparently having to repeat.

"Go get Frank," and there was a push on the shoulder to get him moving, out of there into the hallway where he could finally start breathing again.

00000

"Surprised him," Parks said consideringly, "slashed his throat, then dumped the pot of boiling water on him."

"It took some timing." Frank rocked back on his heels, hands in his pockets.

"Yeah, well, the murderer must have been in the house already, must've been well known to the victim, making himself at home while Legatta was in the tub."

They were all back on the curb in front, trying to stay out of the way while the technicians went in and out. Another car pulled up. Noman stepped out, looking around with that peering, curious way that was beginning to annoy McCormick so much. Parks looked over his shoulder at the sound of the door closing, and gave a weary sigh of resignation.

"They called him, too," he said quietly, as if in unspoken explanation that it hadn't been _him_ doing the calling.

Noman bustled up, with a quick nod at the assembled company and an oblivious smile. Then they all looked toward the front steps of the townhouse. There was a cluster of men emerging, stretcher maneuvered between them, the victim suitably enveloped in a body bag.

A very brief moment of dignified silence held—just long enough for the shrouded corpse to be hefted into the back of the M.E.'s van—then Noman cleared his throat and said, "Sorry not to have gotten here sooner." He cast a pointed look at Parks. "I would have liked to have seen the victim _in situ_."

"Throat slashed, bled to death pretty quick, but lived long enough to show signs of burns from having hot water tossed on him as well," Frank's gruesome precis was delivered in his flattest detective's tone.

"When?" the psychologist asked sharply.

This got him a shrug from Harper. "Not too long. It's gonna take some calculating. The water temperature throws things off a little but they'll figure it out. Not more than a couple of hours, anyway."

"Hours, eh?" Noman let out a long breath and his gaze turned slightly toward McCormick with a self-satisfied expression. "That was a remarkable bit of rapid deduction."

"Wasn't him," Hardcastle interrupted, "not _this_ time. It was me. And all I figured out was the who," he added grimly. "The _how_ was somebody else's idea."

Noman shifted his gaze, to take in the older man, with some apparent reluctance. Mark frowned and fought an urge to explain. Hardcastle's reasoning before the fact had made perfect sense. It was only in retrospect that the whole thing seemed like magic.

"And still too late; still two steps behind this guy," McCormick grumbled.

But he had no time to weigh in further before a uniformed officer stepped up between Harper and Parks, leaning in and saying a few quick words that drew the task force detective away.

He was only gone a moment, while the other four still stood, tensely expectant, with an undertone of irritation from Hardcastle. Parks' return did nothing to dispel the mood.

"Got another body," he said flatly.

"Dammit," Mark muttered. "Harpies, right?"

It was out, and answered with a quick, aggravated look from the judge, before Parks could even give him a perplexed shrug.

"A guy named Ulster. Mob ties."

"Darryl Ulster?" Hardcastle asked. Mark was already pulling the list out, realizing that getting to the bottom of this had taken precedence over all other concerns for the judge. He handed the list over wordlessly to Parks. Harper had already seen it. Ulster wasn't number two, but his name was near the top.

Parks handed it over to one of the other officers with quick curt instructions that all of them needed to be located. "Persons of interest," he said. "We'll work out the details if any of them are reluctant." Obviously they were all familiar names to him.

Noman was leaning over, trying to get a better look at the list before it was carried off. Then his stare refastened itself to the judge.

"_Very_ remarkable piece of deduction," he said quietly. "Two for two."

"There's more than two names on that list," Mark pointed out.

"Might be more murders as well," Noman shrugged diffidently.

00000

They decamped to the latest location, a canyon road up north of the city. The body had been discovered by some linemen, in a spot remote enough that it might have escaped detection had it not been for the raptors they'd spotted, circling nearby.

"Our guy's actually getting cautious, not leaving one where we'll trip over it?" Harper asked between huffs as they trudged up the slope.

"Nah," Parks sighed. "The telephone wires were clipped and I'll bet if those guys had missed the clues, we would've gotten an anonymous call in a day or so."

They were all breathing a little harder as they crested the bluff and had a clear view of the cluster of activity on the far side, just below. One of the techs waved them over and the others parted way for the newcomers.

Mark caught his first glimpse of something that looked not quite human, more like badly butchered meat, though still with the general shape of a human body. The damage, though considerable, was superficial. It was somehow, or maybe even because of that, all the more grisly.

"Vultures?" he whispered, looking up at the lone remaining bird, soaring patiently a ways off.

"Nah," the technician shook his head. "Flayed. Couldn't have even done a tentative ID if the wallet hadn't been left nearby. Not real systematic, though. It was more like little chops, kinda like a vulture might, I suppose. Don't know if he was expecting to fool anybody."

McCormick took a step back and said—soft and quick and almost to himself— "This one was supposed to be a suicide—violence to self, right? But that doesn't make any sense. You can't murder somebody for being a suicide and, besides, we already had them, back at the beginning."

He found the judge next to him, saying "Go sit down over there," and pointing toward some rocks a short distance away. Mark nodded but didn't move until he felt a hand under his arm, and some firm guidance.

The hand was on his shoulder now. He was sitting without being exactly sure how he'd wound up there, a good fifteen feet from the body.

Hardcastle was still standing next to him, unexpected concern etched into his expression. "Long day, huh?" he asked almost gently.

The tone was unexpected, too. Mark frowned, figuring he must look even worse than he felt. That was an interesting notion, since he felt like crap, still breathing too fast, and trying to clear the spots from his vision.

"Yup," he finally drew a deep breath, "long . . . and I don't think it's over yet.

"Found something else here." It was one of the techs, wearing gloves and crouching over the small heap of personal effects that had apparently been left a short distance from the body. He'd already bagged a fair number of items, but this latest one he held up for the others to see. "It's a note." He looked puzzled. "A suicide note, I think."

Parks and Harper looked down at the body, then at each other, in perfect mirrored double-takes.

The evidence tech looked briefly nonplussed. "I don't mean _his_ suicide note. It's got another name on it. 'Shelia Storm'," he read it off and then looked up sharply. "Hey, that woman from last week. The jumper."

The lieutenant and the detective had already closed the distance between them and the tech. Parks was leaning in, reading without touching. "Same color ink. The handwriting's a little shakier, from what I remember." He looked back at Noman. "Rough draft?"

"Quite possibly." The psychologist nodded. "It appears that one of our original suicides was not a suicide." Then he shifted his gaze back to the body. "And our killer has not made a faux pas here, merely a curious interpretation of the facts. He most likely saw _this_ man as guilty of a suicide, simply not his own."

"He'll rearrange the facts as much as he needs to," Mark muttered bitterly. "It's his game. His rules." He didn't care that the psychologist was studying him again. It was all pretty damn unimportant, he decided, as he turned back to the judge.

"There'll be one more. You've got to narrow that list down more," he said urgently.

Hardcastle pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay, well, the first one made sense, and the second one is a stretch, but I guess he's just a creative son-of-bitch, but 'Violence against Nature'?"

"You read the damn study guide. It's a euphemism for homosexuality. You got any likely candidates on your list?"

Hardcastle shot a look at Frank, who shook his head. The judge finally shrugged and said, "Nothing that made it into the files. Most of these guys are pretty old school; that'd be something they'd keep off their resumes."

"All right, so maybe the killer knows stuff we don't know—after all, he'd hired them before; he must've known them some, right?" Mark frowned, sitting silent for a moment. "Or maybe," he finally lifted his eyes, starting up again slowly, "maybe he's just gonna be creative again."

"'Creative,'" Hardcastle echoed glumly.

"Yeah," Mark shuddered. "Crimes against Nature. Was there ever a suspect in the murder of Shelia's other boyfriend? I don't mean Romney, for ordering it, but the guy who actually carried it out—the one who decided to mail her the little souvenir."

Harper frowned and then looked at Parks. "Kepler, Artie Kepler, wasn't it?" The task force detective nodded. Harper turned back, hands in pockets. "Good catch, Mark. It was on account of the M.O.. Kepler had a reputation for sending bits of his victims to the other parties concerned—I guess there was no such thing as bad publicity in Art's book.

"It wasn't cut and dried, though," Harper added, appearing oblivious to the possibilities of a pun. "Up till then it had always been stuff like fingers or ears, though we'd heard he'd once sent a tongue of a guy who'd turned informant, sent it to the guy's brother. But it was never anything like what Shelia got—that seemed more like Romney's idea, being as that was the part that had gotten Bonhavey into trouble in the first place."

"Maybe Romney's idea," Mark said quietly, "but he had to find somebody who wasn't squeamish." He turned to Hardcastle. "Maybe that was Legatta's problem; he didn't have the—"

"Guts for the job," Hardcastle finished hastily, then looked doubtful. "But all these guys kill people for a living. Legatta was a pro."

Come on, Hardcase, there's killing people, and then there's . . ." he paused, glancing over at the remains of the second hit man with a distracted expression as he search for the right word, "_mutilation,_" he finally added. "That's what it is. Not enough to just take lives. More anger here than that."

"Vengeance is a powerful motivating force." It was Noman, still standing by the corpse, speaking out of his own apparent reverie. The others looked back at him suddenly.

Mark frowned sharply. "Okay, so if you buy that, then why do you keep giving me that look?" he asked bluntly. "I didn't have a beef with any of these people."

"Well," Noman smiled thinly, "there are all sorts of offenses that can precipitate a feeling of vengeance. It needn't be personal. It might be against one's sense of justice, for example. But if it makes you feel any better, Mr. McCormick, I've really given up on you as a _prime _suspect. It seems evident that the mechanics of the thing are beyond your scope. This would have taken someone with resources, and a certain _stamina_ that I do not believe you possess."

The psychologist was still smiling. His eyes had shifted slightly to the left. Mark followed the angle and looked up at Hardcastle, standing there, hands in pockets, still apparently contemplating the remaining names on the victims list.

"Yeah," the judge murmured, "Artie Kepler. It makes a lot of sense." He glanced up sharply at Harper. "You got any kinda current address on him?"

"He won't be at home," Mark sank his concerns under the immediate need, "I mean, if he _is_ the next victim. I suppose it won't hurt to look, but he's probably already dead, and, anyway, that part of the circle is supposed to be a burning plain."

Harper, Hardcastle, and Parks all looked grim.

Frank finally grumbled, "It's a helluva big desert, Mark; you got anything in those Cliff Notes that'll narrow it down for us?"

McCormick looked up at the vulture, now in the company of two more, hardly discouraged by the official showing below. "Oh," he sighed, "the guy's creative; he'll think of something." He felt himself shiver, despite the warmth of the late afternoon sun. "There's always the U.S. mail."

00000

Mark drove and neither one of them had much to say._ Three murder scenes in one day kinda takes it out of a person._

They'd accompanied Frank to Kepler's last known address, which appeared current. Nobody there, and no body, either. Mark's sense of relief was shallow and unconvincing. He couldn't shake the dread that accompanied the almost-certain knowledge that it was far from over yet—that and a weird half-hope that the guy, whoever he was, would just hurry up and work through his obsession.

But there was the other matter, the one that had gotten brushed aside this afternoon.

"Noman," Mark started tentatively, after all, it hadn't been said in so many words, "he's after you, now; you realize that, don't you?"

The judge waved that away wearily. "Ridiculous. That doesn't make any sense."

"Which part? That I think he's after you, or that he is?"

"Both," Hardcastle replied firmly, but then he looked fixedly straight ahead and said, "You're probably right, though. Nonsense or not."

"Well," Mark said with a little huff, "which part of this whole thing _has_ made sense, right from the start? And we've been kept so busy, running around . . . have Harper and Parks got any other leads? I mean, now that I'm not on the Most Wanted List," he smiled thinly. "I keep thinking it all goes back to Shelia's first boyfriend."

Hardcastle nodded.

"Did Donhavey have any family?"

The judge wrinkled his forehead. "Noman's still got my file. I need to get that back from him. You think that'll make him point his finger at me more?"

He had the insouciant grin of a man who wasn't the slightest bit worried. Mark hoped it wasn't ill-founded confidence. But then Hardcastle's frown was back, as though he really didn't need the file to give the answer.

"Nah," he replied after a moment's further thought, "none I remember. His mom was dead, I think."

Mark shrugged. "Well, no name in the file doesn't necessarily mean no relative." He had a frown of his own. "'Course it doesn't mean the guy whose name _isn't _in the file would give two hoots about what happened to his son."

"Donhavey might have had a brother . . . or maybe an uncle," Hardcastle suggested gently.

"_Might_," Mark said dryly. "But everyone else is optional. The father is kinda mandatory, even if he's not in the file."

The conversation petered out. They were at the drive and Mark realized he'd gone tense, and that the judge was sitting equally stiffly. He pulled in at a sedate speed that bordered on reluctance.

"He might send it straight to the cops," the judge said quietly. It sounded like a non sequitur, but it was exactly same one that Mark had been wishing on.

They'd pulled up past the fountain. The front porch was visible. The package was not so obvious in the twilight, being small and leaning up against the stoop. But both men had been watching for it closely and now, with the Coyote in park, they cast each other mirrored looks of mutual dread.

"We'll call Frank," Hardcastle said. "It's evidence. We shouldn't even touch it."

Mark nodded in ready agreement. "Maybe we should go in the back way."

The judge started to nod as well, then broke that off and glanced one more time at the porch, frowning. "Nah, I gotta at least look at it first, see if there's a return address. Might be from the aunts or something."

"But don't _touch _it," McCormick advised, with the conviction of a man who knew good things did not come in small packages.

00000

Mark watched from the window of the den. One of the two evidence techs looked familiar, though he couldn't recall precisely which murder scene he'd been at. Both the men seemed casually bored.

The package had been deemed too small and light to be a bomb and they were only there to take photos and then transport it. It was all done with due attention to the fact that they were being closely observed by a police lieutenant and an ex-judge with a reputation for being detail-oriented, but it was done quickly and, before long, they had packed it up and were gone.

Harper was leaving, too. The day had begun thirteen hours and three murders ago, and there was a visible hunch to his shoulders. Mark watched him exchange a few words with Hardcastle, probably Frank assuring the judge he'd let him know as soon as there was anything_ to_ know. That done, he got in his car and departed. The judge was left standing alone in the drive.

Everything was calm, but with the heavy feeling of an impending storm, something with a whole lot of lightning. Mark almost jumped when he heard the buzzer from the oven, three rooms away and not all that loud. He shook himself, then rapped on the window. It was a moment before he had Hardcastle's attention and could flag him in.

00000

Dinner was eaten with a minimum of conversation. They made it all the way through that, and an hour into a movie that neither of them was watching, before the phone rang. This time Mark would have sworn he'd seen the judge jump, too, which was a very bad sign, almost unprecedented.

Hardcastle's side of the telephone conversation consisted mainly of grunts and uh-huhs, none of which sounded too surprised. The call was brief and the good-byes were terse, with no indication that there'd be any further action tonight.

The judge hung up, turning and resting his hip on the edge of the desk. He looked just as tired as Mark felt.

"It's what we thought it'd be."

"_Exactly_ what we thought it'd be?"

"Well," Hardcastle shrugged, "you weren't thinking the guy'd back down now, did ya? You weren't expecting a token finger or something?" He sighed. "Which is too bad, a finger mighta been easier to identify. And the M.E. can't quite call it a _murder_ yet, even though that kind of injury would be kind of hard to survive, if the guy didn't get some medical attention right away."

"If he'd even _want_ to survive it," Mark said grimly. There was a moment of profound silence. McCormick finally shook his head and said, "Okay, now what?"

Hardcastle let out a breath and took another one in. "Now nothing. At least for tonight. The lab guys are working on it, but until the rest of the body turns up, we haven't got much."

"It meant a lot to Kepler, I'm sure," Mark said dryly. "It's weird, ya know, feeling sorry for a bunch of professional killers." There was no immediate response from the other man and, after a second, McCormick squinted over at him. "You don't think this guy's doing some kinda public service, thinning the herd or something like that?"

The judge looked back at him blankly for a moment, then there was a flash of something that bordered on anger. "What the . . . you don't actually _think_ I think that way, do you?"

Mark shied back slightly. "Nah. I didn't. It's just that . . ." he studied a spot just past the window, in the infinite blackness outside. "I dunno," he finally shrugged, "just seemed like you guys take it all in stride—just a couple of dead hoods, more-or-less."

Hardcastle said nothing for a moment, as if he was weighing the truth of it. "Well . . . maybe that's just another way of coping. For those guys who work the crime scenes all the time, it's gotta just be a job—somebody else's tragedy, not theirs. Maybe a real bad one—a kid, or something unusual—that'll stick, keep ya up at night for a while, but if you let all of 'em get to you . . ."

Mark frowned. "Sorry I got so wigged out today."

The judge waved the apology away. "I think today qualified as unusual and, besides, you're not a cop . . . and even cops have to step outside and take a few deep breaths once in a while."

Mark looked around slowly, feeling as though he was in the last sane place in an insane world. "'Unusual'? Yup, I guess that pretty much sums it up."

He got to his feet slowly. "I'm beat." He trudged up the two steps and turned left, toward the front door. He glanced back over his shoulder to say 'goodnight'.

Hardcastle was giving him a puzzled look and finally said "Not the guestroom?"

"Hah, you're not such a hot alibi any more; you realize that, don't you?" Mark managed a smile, though he thought it might have come across as a little thin. "Unless you think my being able to vouch for _you_ is going to do any good."

The judge harrumphed.

"Well, wait'll Noman starts arching his eyebrows at you every time you open your mouth. You'll see."

"The guy's a nut case," Hardcastle muttered. Then his eyes narrowed suddenly and he turned back toward the desk, reaching for the phone.

Mark followed him, stopping at the top of the two steps and leaning against the edge of the doorway. "Come on, you don't think—?"

"He had the file; he knew every damn thing about the case that we did."

"He's under contract to the LAPD. He's—"

"Who knows where the hell they get these guys?" The judge picked up the receiver and started to punch a number in.

Mark took the steps and leaned forward, breaking the connection. "Wait a sec. You're gonna call Frank and tell him you think it's _Noman_?" Mark gave him a sharp look. "And this is right after the guy starts yanking your chain. How's that gonna look?" He paused and frowned. "Hey, how come you didn't think of all this back when it was me he was pointing at?"

"I'm not going to accuse him of anything." The judge grabbed the phone back impatiently and started dialing again. "I'm just going to have Frank do a little checking, that's all—make sure the guy doesn't have any old axes to grind. Now why would a psychologist have a grudge against you?"

"I dunno, Judge, I ticked a couple of 'em off back in Jersey." He cocked his head. "And why would one of them be after _you_?"

"Some of my enemies could afford to buy off a professional. It's possible."

"You mean the killings, and the accusing are two separate things?"

"You got it, kiddo."

Hardcastle finished dialing. This time Mark didn't interfere. He settled slowly into the nearest seat, staring out the window again. The phone conversation was brief, and evidently involved Frank raising many of the same objections that had just been covered.

Mark didn't hear the phone being hung up; it was only when the judge spoke—and apparently repeating himself—that things snapped back into focus.

"You okay?"

"Ah, yeah," Mark answered slowly. "Just thinking. We _still_ don't have any idea who's doing it."

"Maybe the package—"

McCormick's expression went grim. "Think he's going to start leaving useful clues now?"

"He'll slip up. They all do eventually."

"There's two more circles to Hell."

"Okay, _only_ two more."

"But the next one is a doozy—Circle Eight, ten parts. You think he's going to do in ten people?"

"Dunno. Maybe he'll run out of ideas. Maybe it'll be 'Hell Lite'."

"Reader's Digest Condensed Hell?" Mark said dryly.

"Yeah," Hardcastle's own smile was thin, "something like that . . . we can hope, anyway."

Mark nodded, not feeling very hopeful, and got to his feet again. He frowned. "Thieves," he said.

"What?"

"Thieves are in Circle Eight. Thieves get bit by snakes."

"That doesn't sound so bad, compared with all this other stuff."

McCormick was in the doorway again. He shook his head. "Depends on how you feel about snakes." He stepped through into the hallway. There was only a moment of hesitation before he turned right and headed up the stairs.


	5. Chapter 5

**Hellbound**/L.M.Lewis

**Chapter 5**

He woke to the sound of the telephone ringing. It was two shades the wrong side of dawn. McCormick rolled over, blinked, reached for a phone that wasn't there, on a nightstand that wasn't his own, then remembered the previous day with a lurch of recollection.

The sound had stopped after only two rings, and now he heard Hardcastle's gravelly muttering—short questions being asked after a few moments of listening. It had to be Frank, and it was too early for anything further from the crime labs, so the call could only mean one thing.

Mark pulled himself up, and ran his fingers through his hair. He felt no better rested than he had before he'd gone to bed. It was still there, that sense of dread, mingled with an increasing desire to just have it over with.

_But all those crime scenes, all those little plastic bags, and no solid leads yet._

He knew the judge was right. It was only a matter of time; the guy would screw up. Maybe he had already. Maybe the crucial fingerprint was already making its way through the system, waiting to be mated with a name.

Hardcastle was in the doorway, looking disheveled and grim. "Wanna have some breakfast before we go see the body?"

"You think that's a good idea?" Mark swung his feet out of bed and cocked his head. "Where'd they find him?"

"It's not Artie Kepler. Got us another one. Frank says this one's not missing any pieces."

00000

Mark drove; Hardcastle stared straight ahead, pretty fixedly. Their destination was a stretch of beach not even three miles from the estate. The body had been discovered by an early-morning dog walker, who'd almost stumbled into the pit that had been dug in the sand.

The proper place was easily spotted now. The lot above that part of the beach was occupied by several black and whites, and a smattering of other official vehicles, including one from the coroner's office. The lowly, uniformed guy who'd been stationed at the entrance to keep out the curious, started to wave them past before doing the usual double-take upon recognizing the judge.

Mark pulled in. He momentarily envied the people who would be shagged off, the ones who didn't know what was down there on the sand.

"How'd Frank find out so fast?" he murmured, as he climbed out of the Coyote.

Hardcastle was still sitting. There was none of his usual eagerness to get on with things this morning. He shrugged. "The word is out, I suppose. If it's weird and unusual, it's Harper's this week." He opened the door on his side with a sigh and got both feet on the pavement.

They spotted the lieutenant and he'd seen them as well. Parks was there, too, with a cluster of men not far down on the beach, in the dry sand above the area where footprints would have been left. The body was not in sight, but as they approached, they could see there was a mound of sand, flung up alongside a depression.

There were no 'good mornings' to be said, just stern, weary nods from Harper and Parks, and a few of the others. There was an evidence tech down alongside the body, but the rest were keeping off a short distance. Mark didn't blame them. Hardcastle had already conveyed the specifics to him on the way here.

Still, it wasn't quite enough preparation. Harper had nodded to the tech on their arrival. The man pulled back the blanket that had been laid over the body, not a standard crime scene item, it must've been something the murderer had done, a strange courtesy.

What was underneath was in no way as gruesome as the finds of the day before. The victim was lying face up, with the glassy-eyed look of the rigored dead. He was middle-aged, with touches of gray at the temples, now mixed with sand. His face was waxy pale, far paler than even the usual corpse.

The blanket was folded back now, off the upper body completely. This was where the disconnect from logic began. Mark knew, yet the mind tries to make things fit. _He's got his clothes on backwards._ Just a flash of thought, though he knew it wasn't true, because, in fact, it was the body that was on the wrong way.

The tech pulled down the collar, using one gloved finger, so that they could see the row of coarse stitches that ringed the man's neck. _Not so bad,_ Mark thought. _I've seen worse things_. He kept his breathing slow and even.

"Any ID?" the judge asked.

Parks shook his head glumly. "Not so far. Not much blood. The decapitation must've occurred somewhere else. Might be that our guy got interrupted this time. Kinda looks to me like he was planning on burying this one."

Mark hesitated for a moment, saying nothing. Finally he just shook his head.

"But it's one of ours, isn't it?" The detective shrugged almost sheepishly. "Been kind of busy. An awful lot of stuff to coordinate. Didn't have time to pick up a copy of the book. Been letting Noman handle that end of it."

Mark looked around for a nervous moment. The psychologist was nowhere in sight. He felt his shoulders sink down; he hadn't even realized how tense he'd been.

"It's a pit, not a grave," he said quietly. "We're in the eighth circle and there are ten of these—Malebolgia—evil pits. This one is, ah . . . four?" He cast a sideward glance at the judge, who'd had the Longfellow translation out the evening before.

The judge might have spared a quick moment to survey the faces around them before he'd nodded his agreement. "Yeah, four. Fortunetellers. People who tried to predict the future."

"Their heads were fixed facing backwards," McCormick added. "But like I said, this is pit number four. We're missing three—panderers, flatterers, and, um, Simonists."

"What the hell is a Simonist?" Harper grimaced.

"Not in the penal code, Frank," the judge said wearily. "It's someone who sells church favors. Okay," he took a breath and shook his head, "pimps, maybe. But I don't think Romney had much of an angle in the prostitution racket—that would've been small potatoes for a guy like him. And our killer might've dug up a flatterer or two, always plenty of those around a crime boss, but simony? I dunno, that'd be a helluva stretch. I was kinda wondering what he could do with that one myself, last night."

"He is undoubtedly under a great deal of psychological stress at the moment."

The four men turned almost simultaneously to the voice from just behind them. Noman stood there, frowning. His approach had gone unnoticed in the discussion.

"This alteration in a preconceived pattern would be very troubling to a mind such as we are dealing with." Noman's tone verged on the pedantic. He stepped up closer to the edge of the pit and peered in. "He has failed, to some degree." He glanced aside at the judge and added, "It must've cost him a great deal of thought."

Hardcastle looked at him with poorly concealed disgust. "Does this mean he'll quit?"

Noman had gone back to studying the pit and its contents. He barely spared a half shrug. "Hard to say. Sometimes the pattern becomes more important than the original purpose, and even one which is flawed may demand completion."

"Well, I don't know how the heck we're going to second guess him from here on out—too many directions to go in," Hardcastle added. He studiously turned to address Harper and Parks, his back to Noman. "Our best bet has to be cracking one of the ones that's already occurred, before he can pile on any more. Maybe an ID on this guy—"

"At least we've got some finger prints to work with," Park said dryly.

The judge nodded and took a step back, jostling Noman slightly but paying him no other heed. Mark was more circumspect, edging around him. Frank followed, too, after getting a quick jerk of the chin from Hardcastle.

The three of them were almost back to the lot before the judge spoke again.

"What I called you about last night, you come up with anything?"

"He's got a list of credentials as long as your arm." Frank was staring off across the lot toward a newly-arrived van with a local TV station's call letters emblazoned on it. His expression was one of deep annoyance. He broke off from that and turned back the more immediate matter with a casual shrug. "He's freelance, not full time. Thank God for that. But he's done work for the LAPD before."

"Yeah, okay," Hardcastle said impatiently. "We already knew that. What I want to know is could the guy be double-dipping on this one? Maybe he's taking a payoff from someone else to stir up all this dust. He got any debts? Any ties to the mob, or to someone that I've inconvenienced?"

Frank frowned. "Come on, Milt, it's been less than twelve hours since you asked me to check on him, and I've got seven unsolved murders on my hands . . . hell, maybe _ten_. Now you want me to dig even deeper on this guy? We've got limited resources here, and they're already stretched a little thin. Maybe that'd be something you and Mark could handle."

Hardcastle gave that a moment's thought and a slightly more understanding nod. "Yeah, you've got a point. I suppose I just didn't want to make it look like some kind of vendetta, that's all—not that it matters if the guy's dirty."

"Knock yourself out, Milt. I know Parks'll thank you if you find something." Frank was staring at the TV crew, now almost unpacked and looking around for prey.

Noman arrived back up from the beach, appearing preoccupied but available. Harper said 'dammit' under his breath and started to run an interception. It was a moment too late; the reporter had pounced and the psychologist, looking momentarily flustered and surprisingly unwilling, was cornered.

"Just _great_," Harper sighed, then glanced sideward. "Listen, the only reason nobody's listening to him so far, is that Parks can't stand the man and I know he's nuts. If this jumps the wall, someone higher up may want Mark brought in for questioning . . . hell, maybe even you, too."

"_Me_? Come on, Frank—"

"Me, on the other hand," Mark muttered, "no big shock there."

All three men were now looking in Noman's direction. The man had obviously been drawn out by the reporter; he was gesturing toward the beach and appeared to be speaking in an animated manner.

Hardcastle grunted once, as if he'd seen enough and said, "We're outta here." He glanced at his watch and then at Frank. "You had breakfast yet?"

Mark paled, but Harper just shook his head sadly and said, "Nah, but it's gonna have to be a Danish and coffee for me. Might have the preliminary report on your package later this morning—I think the pathologist was calling it a 'limited autopsy'."

00000

Breakfast was not a big success. Food got eaten but Mark didn't think his was going to digest very well. He was up on his feet almost before Hardcastle had tucked into a second piece of toast. Ferrying dishes to the sink was a poor cover for pacing.

The judge gave him an irritated look. "Can you just siddown for a few minutes?"

Mark shook his head no very definitively. "I was thinking maybe a drive. That might help. I mean, unless you have an idea. Something to do."

"A 'drive,' huh?" The judge said. "You sure that doesn't constitute 'flight to avoid arrest'?" His smile was probably meant to imply humor.

Mark wasn't in the mood. He knew he sounded tense when he replied, "Not _yet_. Not till you know for sure that someone's on their way to arrest you. Right now it's still 'going for a drive up the coast,' and you might want to consider joining me."

"Would we be coming back?" Hardcastle asked, still smiling.

"That depends," Mark said flatly.

The judge looked surprised, but not utterly shocked. This time he said 'sit down' more firmly and Mark sank into his seat, compelled.

"Look, kiddo, I know you don't have as much faith in the system as—"

"I ought to?" McCormick interrupted aggravatedly.

The judge sighed. It was a fairly impressive show of patience for him. "You oughtta let me finish, ya know? I was gonna say 'as much faith as _I_ have . . . and sometimes I wonder which one of us is more realistic."

Mark was stunned—it might have been his shocked silence that was misinterpreted.

"You aren't still worried about that 'snake' thing, are ya? I mean, why the heck would the killer go after _you_? You didn't have anything to do with the Donhavey case."

Mark gathered his thoughts and shook his head. "Nah," he laughed, brief and nervous, "the shrink scares me more than the snakes."

"He's hired to speculate, that's all. So that's what he does. None of it's proof."

"Yeah, shrinks don't need proof . . . and, besides, once everyone has made up their minds, they'll find whatever they need. You wait."

Hardcastle opened his mouth but Mark never heard the nature of his objection. It was cut short by a ring of the phone. They both twitched and turned this time. McCormick was on his feet first and had the receiver in his hand.

Frank greeted Mark's 'hello' with a dirge-like, "Well, it just keeps getting better and better."

"You found _another_ one?"

"Nah, I got a heads-up from one of the guys processing the package. They got a set of partial prints off the container—it's Tupperware. You got any of that stuff out there?"

"_Everybody's_ got Tupperware, Frank," Mark tried to keep the impatience out of his voice and wave Hardcastle back down into his seat at the same time. "_Who's_ prints?"

"Lemme talk to him, Mark."

The tone was firm and insistent. McCormick let out a breath. Not that any of it was a big surprise, but the sheer, step-wise aggravation of the past few days was starting to wear on him. He handed the phone over to the judge, who was already on his feet and had been looking puzzled.

He got little more from Hardcastle's terse responses to whatever information Frank was offering. The conversation ended with little more than a grunted good-bye and a cryptic, 'See you in a bit.'

The judge hung the phone up and said nothing for a moment. Mark felt the tension thicken.

"Screw it," he finally said. "I knew I should've gone for a drive. Now it really _is_ flight to avoid arrest."

"Huh?" Hardcastle blinked at him once. "What the hell are you talking about? I'm just gonna run down there and talk to them for a bit. Answer some questions, that's all. You stay here," he added sternly.

Mark stared in confusion.

"Well, they're _my_ prints on the damn container," the judge pointed out. "And it was on my porch. Makes sense they'd want to talk to me."

A moment passed in which Mark looked flabbergasted, and then flustered. "Okay," he finally said, "I'll go along . . . moral support or something."

Hardcastle shook his head firmly. "They're not going to do anything but ask me a few questions."

Mark puzzled it out for a moment and then said, "Having me along is a liability, huh?"

"Not that." Hardcastle frowned as if he was searching for the right words. "Listen," he finally said, "all they want to do is talk to _me_ right now. Sure enough, one of the things they're gonna ask me is who do I think might have had reason to want to set me up like this, _and_ have access to something with my fingerprints on it—"

"And had a copy of the Cliff Notes handy?" Mark finished grimly.

"Yeah, and _that_." Hardcastle nodded. "And I'll do a little song and dance, but if you're standing right there, well, chances are you'll wind up in a holding cell, just so they'll know where you're at when they finally decide what questions they want to ask _you_. So, you stay here. That means _here_. Okay?"

Mark nodded silently.

"Or maybe in the gatehouse," the judge added after a moment's thought, "in case they want to stop by here and check things out."

"There weren't any signs of forced entry."

"I know. I think it might've come from the garage. I had a container like that in the tackle box. That would have had just my prints on it." He still appeared to be mulling it over as he headed for the front door. He was halfway out before he turned and said, one last time, "Here, okay? Don't make me go through the whole buck and wing with those guys and then find out you've done something that makes you look guilty as hell. All right?"

"I said I wouldn't."

"No, you didn't. You just nodded."

"Well, I _won't_. I'll stay here. I promise." He couldn't help it if the last part had come out a little sullen.

"Yeah," Hardcastle squinted at him, then looked satisfied, "and I'll be back in a hour or two."

"Sure."

00000

Mark stood in the driveway and watched the judge's departure and then, partly because he'd promised to, and partly because he couldn't think of a single other thing to do that made any more sense, he retreated to the gatehouse. He picked up the well-worn booklet and put it down several times. He wasn't sure what point there was to reading it again. Nothing from it had been useful so far. _You opened your big mouth, went all clever, and it didn't do a bit of good. Made things worse._

He snuck one last peek at the part about thieves and snakes. He consoled himself with Hardcastle's opinion that victims would have to have some connection to Romney and the original crime.

It wasn't quite an hour, certainly faster than he'd expected, when he heard sounds from outside. _Back already?_ No wonder the man still had faith in the system. They must've only asked him if he knew anything about how somebody's critical parts had wound up on his front doorstep—a quick 'no' and that was that.

Mark got up from the couch and headed for the gatehouse door, intending to register some gripes about 'equal in the eyes of the law'. He had one hand on the knob and was already starting to turn it, when he heard a tentative knock—definitely not Hardcastle's style. Opening it he saw Dr. Noman, right hand already poised to knock again, his left elbow tucked into his side, holding the familiar Romney file in place.

He simply stared at the man, who was smiling back, also tentatively.

"No one answered at the other house." The psychologist gestured over his shoulder. "I wanted to return this to the judge." He patted the file with his free hand. "I think I've gotten as much out of it as I could."

Mark frowned at that, but started to reach for it. "I can tell him you were here."

"Oh, he _is_ out." Noman looked regretful, easing back and tucking the file in a little tighter. "I was hoping I could have a word with him."

McCormick's frown deepened "About _what_?" he asked, almost without thinking.

"Well, he seemed a bit angry this morning. I wanted to apologize."

Mark felt his jaw go slack. He pulled it up again, gritting his teeth slightly.

"_Apologize_? You practically accused him of being a serial killer. You _did_ accuse me of it. I'm not sure 'apologize' is gonna cut it."

Noman was frowning now, too. "I may have been a bit hasty. You can understand my suspicions, can't you?"

Mark shook his head.

"Hmm, well, standing apart from it, you might. I would say Milton Hardcastle's personal approach to justice is astonishingly unique. He does seem to operate . . . oh dear, I don't want to use the term 'outside the law'—"

"Good." McCormick was coming close to grinding some enamel down. "I'd avoid that argument when you apologize to him."

Noman cleared his throat slightly. "Right. Perhaps it would be more precise to say he is a law unto himself. But I see now, that he is held in high respect by others in the law enforcement community. They seem united in their conviction that he could not be responsible for these crimes."

"So," Mark said in weary anger, "is it back to me, then?"

Noman squinted slightly, then said, "No, I believe I was wrong about that, too. I would like to think I am a good judge of character." He smiled in what appeared to be humorous self-deprecation. "Your repulsion by the acts that have been perpetrated the past few days, it did not seem to me to have been feigned."

"It wasn't." McCormick let out a long breath, "So . . . who, then? Any ideas at all?"

"Yes," Noman nodded almost eagerly. "I think I might have some."

Mark pinched his nose, shook his head, and gestured the man through the door. Noman looked around curiously as he walked into the room, like a man who made a bad habit of observation.

He put the file down on the coffee table, and took a seat primly on the far end of the sofa, his eyes still scanning the room. McCormick sat as well. He wasn't all that eager to hear the shrink's latest theory, and was already getting a little tired of the company, but thought he oughtn't do anything to compromise the new good relations.

"So, _who_?" he asked again. "And don't tell me Parks or I'll—" He pulled up short. There was something in the look on Noman's face—utter astonishment. "No _way_," McCormick sputtered. "Look, I don't know the guy but—"

Noman's expression gradually softened to something more knowing and less startled.

"Did you know he's been working this case right from the Donhavey killing?" the psychologist said quietly. "He spent a huge amount of time on that one, and never any closer to the killer." Noman shook his head. "Or at least that is how it _seemed_. And who had better access to the cast of characters than he? Who could have demanded a meeting with any of them? He knew their whereabouts and had access to information about their movements."

Mark sat stock still, reviewing all the events from a new perspective.

"But," he finally shook his head, "the guy's not crazy. He's a damn _police_ officer. This is just another case to him."

Noman shrugged. "Maybe so. Maybe not crazy at all. There have been certain hallmarks on this one, things that didn't quite fit. It is possible that the whole overlay of bizarre actions is merely smokescreen. It is possible that there was only one target, perhaps Romney himself, and the rest of this was just clutter, to hide the real motive."

"_What_ motive? He's a cop; it's a _job_."

"All right, as I said, perhaps no madness at all. His original 'failure' on the Donhavey case might have been the consequences of bribery. Mr. Romney had considerable resources. He might have, in turn, sought a better return on his investment in Detective Parks, or Parks simply thought it was too dangerous, having the whole thing raked up again after the first suicide."

"Bainbridge really was a suicide, then?"

"It appears so to me."

"And the white sheets—"

"Sometimes a sheet is just a sheet," Noman said with a light shrug. "I'll admit it's a stretch for Parks to have seen the start of the pattern and built on it."

"More of a stretch than me seeing it?" Mark asked quietly.

"No," Noman said with a light laugh. "That was definitely the biggest stretch."

"Believe me, if I ever notice anything like that again, I will close my eyes until it goes away."

"No doubt," the psychologist said thoughtfully. And then, after a moment, he added, "I'd like to hear how you came up with it."

He'd managed to sound merely curious, for a change, instead of outright offensive. Mark appreciated the conscious effort it must've taken him.

"Let's just say I grew up believing in Hell," he smiled thinly. "When I found out someone had written a description of it, I thought I ought to read it. Wasn't what I'd expected, though. I never got all the way through and a lot of it didn't make any sense. Still, some of the images were pretty vivid."

Noman nodded.

Mark, sighed and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He thought the whole thing through one more time and finally said, "I dunno, it still seems pretty weird to me. Not that anybody doing something like this wouldn't be weird, but _Parks_?" He shook his head. "That's gonna be a tough sell." He straightened up and edged forward, moving to rise. Noman's voice cut him off.

"Look at the file. The page I put on top."

Mark frowned and reached for it, turning the cover back and staring down at the first page, which was an unfamiliar piece of paper with familiar handwriting on it. He reached for it. He'd only had the split second to recognize it as his own, not enough time to focus on the words, before a sharp blow took him by surprise.

00000

"Come on, now, I didn't hit you _that_ hard."

The nudge to his leg was as insistent as the voice. McCormick tried to move away, and found he was wedged up against something hard and cold, with his arms in an awkward position.

_You're sitting in the shower and you're handcuffed. _The pieces drifted slowly into position but not the explanation for how he'd wound up there.

"Okay, this'll be a bit of a shock."

_Noman_. The last piece snapped into place and all that was left was the damn 'Why?'

Then it hit him, a drenching blast of cold water. His shirt and pants were no protection at all. He tried to scramble up but the damn handcuffs made it too awkward and he slipped back down.

After only a few minutes, though it seemed much longer, the water stopped. His eyes were open. There was a fuzzy figure, seen through drips and straggles of wet hair, and Noman's voice again, not unkindly, saying, "There now, that's a little better. It'll speed things up a bit."

This time he said it out loud. "Why?"

"First things first," the man said slowly, as if he wasn't sure McCormick was all the way back yet. "I have a gun here. You see?"

Mark squinted a little. He saw. It was being held with a surprising amount of confidence for a guy with a couple pages of academic credentials.

"Do as I say and you'll live a little longer."

Mark noted the qualification on the end of that statement, but the rapidly rising certainty that he was looking at the Inferno Killer, made the gun seem a bit tame.

"Maybe I'd prefer being shot," he said. "I really hate snakes."

"Snakes?" The man looked briefly puzzled. "Oh, _snakes_. Hell, no." He frowned thoughtfully. "Wish I'd thought of it though, but, no, too late for snakes. And where the heck would I have gotten them, anyway?" He shook his head and gestured with the gun.

Mark worked his way up the wall, slowly, leaning back against it until the spinning stopped. Nothing he could do about the shivering, even if he hadn't been doused in cold water he might've been doing that. He stepped out of the shower stall, hearing his shoes squelch on the tile.

"Why?" he said again, watching the other man step back out of reach.

"Maybe you should explain it to _me_."

"For Donhavey, I figure. You're his father?" Mark asked with weary certainty.

"That's really quite amazing. How do you do it?" The smile that blossomed on the other man's face was extraordinary—yet sad, too.

"Too weird, though. I mean, a guy like him, a junior mobster, having a shrink for a father."

"Oh, now you're being slow. And just when I was expecting better. Must've been the hit to the head."

"You're not Noman?" Mark frowned.

"Well," the other man said quietly, "I have to say, the name seemed very appropriate, but, no, I'm not him. He's been dead for a week and a half already. Fortunetellers, charlatans. I was secretly pleased to see you shared my opinion of them."

Light dawned, slow and inexorable. Mark grimaced. "The guy on the beach?"

"Precisely. Cold storage. I took all the shelves out of a refrigerator. The M.E. will figure that part out, most certainly. The identification may take a lot longer."

"Your credentials? Nobody questioned who you were?"

"It was a risk, I know, but it's a big department, the LAPD, and no one on this case had actually _met_ Dr. Noman. As for all the paperwork—I'm a forger, by trade. Lock picking, a little light safecracking, all of that. Never anything violent before this. Never saw the reason for it. Didn't actually know I had it in me. Maybe I _am_ mad. Maybe they drove me to it—what they did to my boy." He sighed and shook his head.

"And my name is . . . not important. I've never been arrested; my prints aren't on record anywhere."

Mark noticed he had gloves on now as he backed away to the coffee table. The man reached down, eyes still kept carefully on McCormick. He lifted the sheet that was on top of the open file, and set it aside. He closed the rest and picked it up.

"I never got to read it," Mark said with a nod toward the piece of paper and a curiosity that was not all feigned.

"It's your confession."

"I thought you'd decided to hang it on Parks."

"No, that was all merely a _ruse de guerre_, sorry to say. Just a little extra sleight-of-hand to distract you. Very sorry—you're it. The easiest one to implicate, by far."

Mark frowned. "Not snakes, though, huh?" He was shivering in earnest. Then he jerked his chin again at the sheet of paper. "So what'd I say I did?"

"Everything."

"Not the Lindbergh kidnapping."

"No," the man smiled. "Not quite that far. Not Bainbridge, either. Just Shelia through Hardcastle."

Mark yanked his eyes up and fastened the man with a rigid look.

"Oh, him? Yes, but not yet. And I'm sorry about that, too, but it's necessary. He'll be pit number eight in the eighth circle. I like the symmetry of it, don't you?" His expression had taken on a strangely dreamy cast. "'False Counselors.' Seemed appropriate. That's what he been all along, hasn't he? Kibitzing on the case but never getting to the bottom of things."

"'_Necessary_?'" Mark said, still stuck on that first idea.

"Yes, the pattern. And it fits so well with you being the murderer." The man paused in thought and then looked quizzical. "You thought I'd kill you for having been a _thief_? That'd be a bit hypocritical on my part, wouldn't it?"

"But I _was_ a thief; I'm not a murderer." McCormick heard a rising note of panicky disbelief in his voice. He couldn't help it.

"Sorry," the man murmured. "I'm committed. The pattern, see? I've got your confession all written out. Very nice job, too and I didn't have all that much to work off of." He glanced down at the paper but only for a fraction of a second, then his gaze was back on McCormick. "And it's so appropriate, you killing Hardcastle and then killing yourself—you know—that last inner part of the ninth circle, those who were violent toward benefactors. I swear, I didn't even know where it was heading myself. It's like destiny.

"Problem is the whole frozen lake concept, not easy to achieve in southern California. But, like you said, it's all a matter of creativity." He gestured again with the gun, this time toward the door.

Mark stumbled slightly, but moved when the gesture became a little sharper. He was still stuck a few ideas back.

"Pit eight?" He half-turned, looking over his shoulder at the man now behind him.

"Immolation. I know, been there already, and I hate to repeat what I did to that little weasel of a former assistant DA. He was on the take, you know, from Romney himself. But this one will be more spectacular. More _fitting_. A Viking funeral of sorts for the great Milton C." The man frowned. "Or is that mixing metaphors?"

Mark was outside, still shivering, now in the stiffing breeze. "When?" he asked.

"When he gets back," the man prodded with the gun. "Which will be soon, I imagine, unless the DA is even denser than I think. So we need to get on with things."

"How? The immolation, I mean." Mark took a slow look around at the front drive and saw nothing out of place. He took a couple steps forward, in the hopes of promoting an air of cooperation and information sharing.

"The devil's in the details," the man smiled thoughtfully. "You are a curious man, Mr. McCormick. What difference does it make? You'll be dead. If you're intent on ruining my plans, then you'll make me shoot you right now. Either way, it won't save _him_, just make me angry, and inclined to make you suffer a bit. Your death, as planned, is really quite painless. I harbor you no particular malice."

Mark squinted back at him.

"All right," the man shrugged. "I'll grant you that murdering someone always harbors a certain amount of malice. But it's the _pattern_, don't you see?"

And for a moment, Mark almost could. The man was mad.

He strained to listen for the returning truck. He wished he knew how long he'd been out after he'd been hit—long enough for the guy to haul him into the shower. Had it been five minutes? _At least that._ _Okay, and this part, maybe another ten. It had to have been at least an hour since he left. _And just how dense would the DA be? All he knew for certain was that there was no point provoking this man until the last possible moment.

"This way."

Another gesture with the gun. Mark walked across the lawn toward the back drive. He moved along, not too fast but at a rate that approximated passive resignation. He realized they were heading for the garage. _It'll have to be before we get there._

He tried not to go visibly tense, the shivering made that easier. But this was the moment; two more steps and they'd turn the corner and be inside. He slowed a second, letting the man close the space between them. Then he pivoted and lunged backwards, made unexpectedly clumsy by his cold, stiff muscles and realizing he was far slower than he'd meant to be.

The man didn't even bother to get off a shot. It was the butt of the gun this time. And McCormick went down, carried partly by his own momentum.

00000

He had a brief and fragmented notion of being dragged and then propped, left temporarily to his own devices while something else was being done. He recognized the thing he was leaning against. It was the chest freezer Hardcastle had invested in for the proper storage of trout and steaks. They weren't being properly stored right now. He looked around blearily at the untidy piles of packages on the floor of the garage. A bucket sat there, too, in a puddle of water.

No time to process the implication before he was hauled upright. Lurching unsteadily against a wave of nausea, he felt himself pushed forward, off his feet. There was a sudden shock of cold water that made him thrash. His eyes were open again.

"Stop it," the man's tone was harsh. He had him by the front of the collar and was holding him down. It was maybe two feet of water, no more, standing in the bottom of the empty freezer. Mark couldn't help it, gun or not, the urge to get free of the cold was too intense.

"All right then, I didn't want this to be so hard." He heard the scolding tone "It's supposed to be a relatively pleasant way to die."

Maybe the guy was right, Mark thought. The sharp bite had already gone out of the water, and in its place was a numbness that, in spots, already resembled a strangely seductive warmth. One tiny part of his brain was still ticking over, though, and that part knew he'd have to take the handcuffs off at some point.

McCormick closed his eyes, let his head fall back slowly, and tried to go limp. It wasn't all that hard; the shivering had already stopped. _And he'll have to put the gun down to get at the cuffs; he can't leave those on you. _It was a long, hard thought and he was especially proud of it.

_But he'd better hurry up._

A distant, annoying sound and the hand gripping his collar, which had become barely noticeable amid the numbness, suddenly let loose. Mark forced his eyes open, and saw the dim shadows on the ceiling of the garage suddenly plunged into close-at-hand darkness.

_Dammit, you forgot to take off the cuffs._

He tried to sit up, and struck his head against the inside of the lid and slipped back down. The panic was slow and not too pressing. _It doesn't have a latch. Just . . . stand up._ He tried to get his legs under him in the narrow and slippery space. Then he tried to remember why he was trying to do that. The whole thing seemed pretty damn unnecessary.

More noises, very distant. Might have been some shouting, and then a louder sound that brought him upright again, slower this time, but the urgency was back. _Immolation_. He couldn't feel his feet or lower legs, but he thought they were more or less underneath him. He also couldn't tell if he was pushing, but now there was a crack of piercing light, shining down from just above him, and the noises were much louder.

_Gunfire._

But that looked to be about the best he could do for the moment. He took a deeper breath; that helped some. Then he hollered. No use there, it was more like a mumble and had coincided with another couple of rounds. He got up on what he thought were his knees, wedged his head and shoulders out past the lid, gave one last, unfeeling push, and fell unceremoniously onto the floor of the garage.

Voices this time, closer at hand. His name being called out and not too patiently.

"He's gotta be around somewhere. Look, the damn car's still here."

_The cavalry._

His 'over here' came out sounding like he had a mouthful of marbles but it didn't matter. Hardcastle had already seen the mess and shouted the same thing, a lot clearer and presumably at Harper. Then he was down, at his side, fussing with the handcuffs and propping him up.

"I s-said I'd stay p-put." Mark muttered.

The words still sounded like mush, but he was shivering again, which he thought might be a good sign. The judge had managed to get his own jacket off and wrapped around his shoulders. The sitting up part didn't work without ongoing support.

"This isn't what I had in mind." Hardcastle's look of alarm was poorly concealed by the gruff tone. He'd obviously put together a quick and ugly picture of what had happened.

Frank had arrived. "Got an ambulance coming for the other guy." He did the quickest of visual assessments before he stripped off his jacket as well, and handed it down to the judge. "I'll have 'em make it two."

"J-just need to w-warm up," Mark protested. This time the words, though still thick, were more intelligible.

"And get your head examined," Hardcastle added, having found at least one of the lumps. "Come on," he looked up at Harper, "help me get him inside."

Harper was on one side, and Hardcastle on the other. He was hefted to his feet, which still weren't sending back any signals. Mark didn't even waste any mumbles fending them off. They headed out the garage door and to the left—the steps apparently looking too challenging.

They were already on the front drive and turning left again when Mark balked, and muttered, "_N-no_." He paused, shaking his head stiffly. Then he started talking again, this time striving for more clarity. "It's b-booby-trapped."

His tone must've conveyed more than the words. The judge stopped pulling. Mark saw a black and white in the drive with a couple of officers. One of them was stooped over someone lying sprawled on the drive. More vehicles were coming in.

"Gotta get 'em all b-back from the door—f-fire-bomb. Ask _him_." He nodded toward the figure on the ground.

"Not in much shape to explain things," Harper said dryly. And then, to Milt, "You can manage him?" He disengaged from his left-sided support. "I'll get the cordon up and call the bomb squad."

Hardcastle nodded and they changed direction for the gatehouse.

00000

Dry clothes. That was the first order of business according to Hardcase, and he didn't seem much satisfied with Mark's progress on the buttons. He was badgered, stripped, handed a towel, which he couldn't get his fingers to close around, badgered some more, and finally tugged and pulled into some sweats.

"It'll do for now," the judge said, looking less than fully satisfied and still ready to pack him off in an ambulance.

Mark tried to make his nod visible through the shaking, tried to get his fingers to bend, tried not to stumble on his now-burning feet as he was ushered to the sofa.

"M-my confession," he pointed, with all five fingers at once, to the piece of paper on the coffee table. "I n-never got to read it." Then he frowned as Hardcastle settled him sideways, onto a comforter that had been hastily scavenged from the bed—more covers on top. "Hey, how'ja wind up b-back here with Frank?"

"Oh, that?" The judge made some space for himself at the foot-end of the sofa and sat down, looking a little winded after all the bustle. He leaned over and studied the note without touching it. "Well," he looked up after a few moments, "you were certainly a busy guy."

"Here, _Frank_," Mark repeated insistently.

"Ah," Hardcastle sat up again. "Well, turns out Noman had prints on file."

Mark's frown turned more puzzled. "He s-said he didn't."

"No, I mean the _real_ Noman. He got himself busted in some kinda protest over at Berkeley back in the sixties. Got lucky, turned up a quick match for the body."

Mark's frown looked absolutely baffled by this time. "N-nobody matches prints th-that fast."

"Well, might've been because Harper was feeling a little guilty. When he went back to the station this morning he started doing some more digging on Noman—the _real _one—found the 'record', not a whole hell of a lot of record, never kept him from being hired as a consultant, but it included his booking shots. They were seventeen years old and the guy had a lot more hair, but Frank didn't think they were a match for _this _Noman.

"He showed it to Parks. Parks headed over to Noman's listed address. He found . . . my God, what he found. Artie Kepler, for one thing, in a fridge."

Hardcastle paused on that thought, looking down at the note very fixedly. He finally let out a sigh and cast a quick glance sideward.

"And there were more photos there. One was pretty current and it definitely wasn't _our_ Noman; it was the guy on the beach. So, as soon as we heard that, I called here—"

"No answer, huh? I must've been in the shower."

"_Yeah_," the judge shook his head. "So we headed over here, me and Frank."

"Not an APB?" Mark asked, only half-joking.

Hardcastle shrugged. "Well, that too."

Mark's expression went a little stiff, but he managed to hang onto his thin smile. "Guess you had to hedge your bet."

"For _Noman's_ car, not for yours," Hardcastle said a bit righteously. "But I still didn't think he'd go after _you_. You hadn't been involved with the Donhavey case."

"No," McCormick shuddered, "but neither had the _real_ Noman, right? And I'd annoyed him. All that being clever pissed the hell out of him. Anyway," he finally relaxed into the blankets, "it was the pattern. That's what he said. I guess he'd finally run out of real victims and just needed two more to sort-of round things out."

There was the rapidly approaching sound of more sirens. Hardcastle got up to look. "Bomb squad," he said casually, after a moment.

"Good thing you have understanding neighbors," Mark said dryly.

The judge shrugged. "Helps to have a large lot." He frowned, watching for a moment more, then finally returning to the sofa. He sat down at the far end again. They both sat there for a few minutes, listening tensely for sounds of miscalculation.

After a decent interval of silence, Hardcastle let out a cautious breath and said, "I think we should go fishing."

McCormick thought about that for a moment. "Oh, you wanna restock the freezer, huh? Can I finish thawing out first?"

The older man snorted.

"Okay," Mark grudged. "Fishing. Something dull. I can handle dull for a while."

A solid rap on the door barely preceded Frank poking his head in. "Got it. Pretty straightforward they say—a couple of buckets of gasoline and an ignition source rigged to the front door. Your hallway still smells like a filling station. They're ventilating the place and doing a secondary sweep. Still need the ambulance? The bomb guys want to keep the area clear for a little while longer."

Mark's 'no' and Hardcastle's 'yes' were nearly simultaneous.

"I'm pretty thawed out already," McCormick protested, then abruptly changed tacks, "Hey, Frank, you wanna go fishing?"

This got him a briefly confused look and then a weary shake of the head. "Hah, see, that's the difference. I've got a week of paperwork on this one. You two get to take off. Must be nice."

"Oh," Mark said, "yeah."

"Hey," Frank stepped a little further into the room, "don't suppose the guy gave you a name, anything like that?"

"No," Mark shook his head. "Said it wasn't important. He still won't say?"

Frank glanced over his shoulder for a moment and then back. "No," he replied very fixedly.

Mark suddenly realized he hadn't heard any other ambulance sirens. He wondered who'd done the shooting and, almost at once, decided it had probably been a group project.

_But this is it. It's over. This is the end of it. _

"I think you ought to come fishing with us," he said firmly. "We can wait till you're done with all the reports."


	6. Chapter 6

**Hellbound/** L.M.Lewis

**Epilogue**

Frank drove, Hardcastle navigated, and Mark sat in the back seat, making only the occasional smart remark.

It had only taken four days to finish the most pressing of the reports. Harper related, with some satisfaction, how much of the paperwork he'd shoveled off on Parks, who seemed eager to tackle it, being so pleased that his ongoing opinion of 'Noman' had been vindicated.

But four days was about the soonest that Mark thought he could have gotten a decent grip on a rod and reel anyway. He leaned back, flexing and straightening his fingers. They were looking less sausage-like this morning and were definitely more functional.

Then there was the matter of sleeping. He hoped a change of scenery would decrease the number of headless corpses and incinerations cluttering the nocturnal landscape, though past experience had shown that this was more a matter of time, and four days, in this case, might not be enough.

Harper's remarks on delegation had been as far as they'd gone, this morning, into a discussion of what the press was still calling 'The 'Inferno' Killings'. War stories, Mark decided, are rarely recounted by those who have actually been through the war. The guys in the front seat were mostly discussing fish—ardently discussing fish—the only topic Mark had ever heard Frank address with anything even remotely approaching ardor.

And then there was a brief and awkward silence and a quick, concerned look over the shoulder from Frank, with a longer one from Hardcastle. Mark blinked blankly and became aware that he'd been away for a bit—dozed off most likely, maybe a little deeper than a doze. They'd left bright and early this morning and last night's sleep had been particularly disjointed.

"Okay?" Hardcastle asked very simply.

Mark wondered what he'd done, or maybe said, to provoke the stares. Then he decided he didn't want to know. Instead he asked, "How much further?"

"Not too far. We take the next right, just up here a mile or so."

The judge had turned back to Frank to give the directions. He looked glad for the distraction. Mark sat up a little straighter, scrubbing his face once, quickly, with a solemn vow not to fall back asleep.

00000

It was a pretty okay day, by fishing standards, especially since he was excused from the cleaning and filleting chores, still being under strict instructions from Charlie Friedman to not get his hands cold and wet for a while. This also kept him off all but the lightest fishing duties. He hauled in a token brown trout—to show he was enjoying himself—then retreated to fire-tending.

He ignored Hardcastle's occasional glances of assessment, snatched a quick nap while the other two were up to their hip waders in mid-stream, and cheered on the rivalry that was shaping up to a dead heat by mid afternoon. It was a good day for basking, with just enough of the mountain coolness to be pleasant.

And no one commented when he threw an extra log or two on the fire that evening. They just moved back a little ways and let him poke at it to encourage the light. Some more talk about fish, and Frank was off to bed—he'd had a long couple of days and an early morning.

Then more fire poking and less talk, as the stars rotated slowly and the crescent moon set. The fire was down to embers—more heat than light. Hardcastle finally yawned pointedly and looked at his watch.

"Almost eleven," he said quietly.

"Go on," Mark replied very evenly. "I'll probably stay up a little while. I fell asleep this afternoon. The excitement was too much," he added with a half-grin.

Hardcastle wasn't buying. He was giving him a close study. He finally said, "It's okay."

"What is?"

"To be upset, out-of-sorts, after something like that."

There was another long silence.

"To be afraid?" McCormick finally asked doubtfully.

"Yeah." The judge nodded. "That too. The day you stop being afraid of stuff like that—then _I'm_ gonna start worrying."

Mark's look of doubt deepened. "But you aren't. You _weren't_."

"The hell I wasn't. Well, maybe I wasn't as quick on the uptake as you were this time, but I was damn afraid when we pulled in the drive and I saw Noman's car—the Coyote still there, too—and that guy comes running 'round the side of the garage popping off with the Glock." Hardcastle shook his head slowly once, then stared into what was left of the fire. "And me having told you to stay put and not worry." One more shake of the head. "Talk about your Evil Counselors. _Hah_."

"Well, it seemed like pretty good advice," Mark smiled. "I mean, even I was only worried about snakes. I didn't think I was gonna rate my own special circle." Then the smile faded, replaced by something with more resolve. "But when it's over, it's _over_ . . . or it oughta be."

"Maybe," Hardcastle shrugged, "but that doesn't mean you can put it out of your head just like that." He was still staring at the embers. He finally added quietly, "You think about what might have happened—us five minutes later, him five minutes quicker—"

"Or if he'd just stayed put, and you and Frank had gone to the house first," Mark muttered.

The judge looked over at him sharply, with an expression that initially held a certain amount of puzzlement, maybe even a hint of surprise. But that quickly retreated.

"Yup," he said, adding a quick nod. "mighta been messy. But none of that happened and it's over and done"

"And that's the end of it." Mark poked the fire again. "Except for restocking the freezer."

"Right." Hardcastle leaned forward and got to his feet. "And that means we gotta be up and at 'em tomorrow, bright and early." He scuffed a little dirt onto the fire. "Better put this out and hit the sack, okay?"

Mark gave it one last poke, and briefly considered the merits of another log. But, no, he finally decided, it was over and done and time to call it a night.

Then he reached for the shovel and began to carefully bury it all.


End file.
